The great American humorist and writer Ambrose Bierce (1842-circa 1914) published a famous work called “The Devil’s Dictionary,” in which he provided astute (if sardonic) definitions of many common terms in the English language. Bierce defined “insurance” for example, as “An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the

According to the American Arbitration Association’s website, “arbitration—the out-of-court resolution of a dispute between parties to a contract, decided by an impartial third party (the arbitrator)—is faster and more cost effective than litigation.”

Yeah…don’t be too sure about that.  Insurance companies are slipping arbitration clauses into more and more policies, and many of these

The fine people who wrote the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (and their state equivalents) certainly had a sense of humor. FRCP 1, for example, says: “These rules govern the procedure in all civil actions and proceedings in the United States district courts…They should be construed, administered, and employed by the court and the parties

Arnold Palmer once described golf as “deceptively simple and endlessly complicated.”  That’s a good description for insurance also.  (Fortunate for me, since I get paid to figure it out.)  Given the rules of construction, ambiguities (even latent ambiguities) in insurance policies are supposed to be construed against the carrier. I’ve therefore always wondered why the

Years ago, there was a comedy ensemble variously called “The Dead End Kids,” “The East Side Kids,” and, finally, “The Bowery Boys.”  (They were made famous in the 1938 Cagney/Bogart film, “Angels With Dirty Faces.”)  The protagonist of the group was a character named “Slip” Mahoney, played by the actor Leo Gorcey. Slip would routinely

There’s an excellent, but sad and haunting, nonfiction book written by Jeff Hobbs called  “The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace.”  It’s about a kid who grew up among poverty, gangs and tough guys in a rough section of Newark, but who was naturally gifted and ended up at Yale. Unfortunately, he couldn’t outrun