duty to defend

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There’s a funny (perhaps unintentionally so) website called The Robing Room, on which lawyers rate judges in various categories.  The site is funny mostly because, from reading the reviews, you can generally predict who won and who lost a case before that particular judge.  Take, for example, Judge Joseph F. Bianco of the Eastern District…

I greatly respect judges.  And, I feel sympathy for judges. They have a very difficult job. We hand them enormous caseloads for relatively low pay (most of them could make a lot more money in private practice) and then expect them to become conversant in every legal subject imaginable, from water rights to alimony.  By…

I’m reading a wonderful book right now called “Young Men and Fire,” by Norman Maclean.  The book is about a horrific forest fire that took place in Montana in 1949.  Amazing how small sparks can result in a conflagration beyond all belief.   Those of us involved in the litigation game are familiar with that problem. …

One of the issues that frequently comes up in complicated third-party cases is:  How far outside the underlying complaint does the carrier have to go to determine whether coverage exists?  New Jersey is not an “eight corners” state (in which all the court considers is the four corners of the policy and the four corners…

Every once in awhile, we come across a case that calls to mind the formal legal term:  “Eeeeww.”  Here’s one that’s now before the New Jersey Supremes, and that (if you can get past the ghoulishness) involves two important questions:  

(1)  When does an “occurrence” take place under a liability policy? 

(2)  Can a court…

Good stuff over at Amy Stewart’s blog on the issue of who gets to pick counsel – the policyholder or the carrier.  Naturally, this depends on the policy language…unless the carrier reserves its rights, in which case the interests of the policyholder and carrier may be in conflict.  The flip-side, of course, is if the…

Every now and then, a business owner asks me to review his company’s coverage program to make sure that adequate protection exists.  I always say the same thing. “You’re looking at this all wrong.  Buying insurance isn’t about buying protection.  Buying insurance is about buying a right to sue an insurance company.  Once you accept…

New York’s highest court just handed down an interesting decision in Fieldston Property Owners Ass’n v. Hermitage Ins. Co.  The case involved an underlying suit for “injurious falsehood,” and the question of who was obligated to provide a defense – the CGL carrier, the D&O carrier, or both?  The CGL policy stated that its coverage was…

I’m currently preparing to try another coverage case.  This one involves the question of whether an insurance company, having denied a defense outright, can later second-guess the amount of defense costs and settlement paid by the policyholder out of its own pocket. 

In preparing the case, I came across an interesting opinion written by the…

So here’s a frustrating aspect of coverage work.  The underlying plaintiff sues the policyholder based on a complaint that was inartfully drafted (which, in some instances, is a nice way of saying that the complaint looks like it was written while the lawyer was tripping on mescaline).  The carrier denies coverage because nothing in the…