Insurance

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Florida Attorney General Candidate Sean Shaw and I collaborated and drafted language that made people making the values, numbers, scopes of loss or directly or indirectly, helping determine an insurance claim amount, have an attorney license or a public adjuster license. We wanted to better protect consumers and help stop allegations of or actual insurance fraud from occurring.…
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New Books from Full Court Press Full Court Press continues to publish expert secondary content. This time it’s a new collection of insurance law treatises from consultant, expert witness, arbitrator, and mediator Barry Zalma. Barry Zalma practiced law in California for more than 44 years as an insurance coverage and claims-handling lawyer, and has spent more than 50 years in the insurance business. We welcome his deskbooks as the first published under our Full…
An “Occurrence” Must Be Fortuitous Ohio, bucking the majority of court opinions, has interpreted the standard Commercial General Liability (CGL) policy to require for coverage to exist that a loss is fortuitous. An “occurrence” to Ohio courts require that the damage is accidental, fortuitous, and not a normal business risk of a person in the construction business. Policies are interpreted by Ohio to not insure an insured’s work itself; rather, the policies generally insure consequential…
On 11 October 2018, the FCA published a guidance consultation for FCA-authorised firms on preparing statements of responsibilities and responsibilities maps under the Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SM&CR). Under the SM&CR, which will apply to all FCA authorised firms from 9 December 2019, firms will be required to prepare statements of responsibilities for each senior manager, and all enhanced firms will be required to have a responsibilities map. While the guidance is directed at…
Here is an excellent blog post about the percentage of public pension income from investment returns. The average for all public pension plans is about 60% of income is from investment returns. That’s why the investment assumption is so important. It needs to be realistic to get a true sense of how PERS will perform in the future. And as Kingfish regularly hammers on Jackson Jambalaya, the projections for future participants in the system also…
It is estimated that approximately 8% of Americans own some form of cryptocurrency.1 Although cryptocurrency first appeared in 2008, it is still in its early stages. In fact, what is meant by a cryptocurrency is still evolving. It was not until March of this year that Merriam-Webster Dictionary first codified a definition of cryptocurrency, which it defined as: Any form of currency that only exists digitally, that usually has no central issuing or regulating authority…
As companies experienced cyber-related incidents, they have sought coverage for their losses under a variety of different kinds of insurance policies. As discussed in the following guest post, courts have struggled to address the coverage issues these claims present. The article’s author is Peter Selvin, a member of TroyGould PC, where he practices in the areas of civil litigation and insurance coverage and recovery. A version of this article previously appeared in the Los Angeles…
The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, applying Pennsylvania law, has held that a professional liability insurance policy’s outside business exclusion precluded coverage for an underlying lawsuit arising out of an insured attorney’s alleged use of privileged information to benefit his own business interests.  Westport Ins. Co. v. Hippo Fleming & Pertile Law Offices, 2018 WL 4705780 (W.D. Pa. Oct 1, 2018).…
Fictionalized True Insurance Crime Books The following true crime books resulted from my 51 years as an insurance claims professional and insurance coverage attorney. The names and places have been changed to protect the guilty. “HEADS I WIN, TAILS YOU LOSE” A collection of columns originally published in the magazines “Insurance Journal,” “Insurance Week,” and “The John Cooke Insurance Fraud Report” insurance trade publications serving the insurance community in the United States that have been…
Endorsement Changes Basic Policy Wording Insurance policies are contracts that bind the parties to the agreements stated in the policy wording. Basic insurance contracts start with a standard form providing the coverages sought that can then be modified or limited by endorsements attached to the policy so that the insurer can limit coverage to those it is willing to take. Courts must interpret the contract of insurance by reading the entire contract before applying its…