Are you the parent of a teenager? Have you ever been the parent of a teenager? If the answer to either of those two questions is yes, have you ever felt like you’re banging your head against the wall? You think you’re speaking plain English, but they’re just not getting it.
That’s the way I…
Back in the days of the environmental insurance coverage wars, we on the policyholder side argued (eventually successfully in New Jersey) that the word “sudden”, as used in the 1973 version of the pollution exclusion, meant “unexpected” and did not have a temporal connotation. My friends in the defense bar often criticized us for trying…
The ongoing battles over construction defect coverage remind me of the good old days in the ‘80’s and ‘90s when we used to fight over asbestos and environmental coverage claims (we still have some of those claims, but to a much lesser extent). Construction defects even involve battles over the appropriate trigger of coverage! Ah…
Years ago, there was a Bell Labs facility behind my house, and on Sunday afternoons, the engineers (mostly Indian and Pakistani) would get together and play cricket on the large lawn. I watched the matches quite a bit, but I never could get a grip on the rules. Then a British friend told me that…
My old law partner Carl Salisbury is on the warpath against carriers’ efforts to escape construction defect coverage. He has some interesting things to say about a recent pro-carrier South Carolina decision. You can read Carl’s excellent blog post by clicking here. (I promise not to call them “business risk” exclusions any more,
When I was in grammar school, the class wise guy was a kid named Nicky DeLuca. One day, we were in gym class, and the coach was trying to teach us the importance of fundamentals in basketball.
“You have to have a strong foundation,” the coach said. “It’s like building a house. You have to…
The late, great comedian Alan King used to tell a story that went like this: “The other day, my house caught fire. My lawyer said, ‘Shouldn’t be a problem. What kind of coverage do you have?’ I said, ‘Fire and theft.’ The lawyer frowned. ‘Uh oh. Wrong kind. Should be fire OR theft.’”
Recently, a…
It’s amazing how, when the economy tanked, construction defects began to multiply exponentially. I’m not (necessarily) trying to ascribe purely financial motives to the plaintiffs in these cases, but there’s no doubt that, at my firm at least, we’ve seen a marked increase in the amount of coverage litigation over construction defects.
So, what’s the…