In the 2008 film Wall-E, Earth is a post-apocalyptic wasteland with nothing on it but the abandoned remnants of human society, and a forlorn, trash-compacting robot. The robot’s only living company is a pet cockroach named Hal, which I guess is Pixar’s nod to the popular notion that cockroaches will outlive us all. (Or maybe it’s a tribute to Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey.) You know what else will outlive us all? Law firm…

Here’s a piece of useless trivia for you.  You know that old saying that something “isn’t worth the paper it’s written on”? The saying apparently originated back in 1861, when Count Johann Bernhard von Rechberg und Rothenlöwen (remember him?), an Austrian statesman, was presented with a document recognizing Italy as a nation-state, and first uttered those now-familiar words. You might want to remember Count Johann’s opinion the next time someone shows you a certificate of insurance. …

Not long ago, there was a kerfuffle over the use of the term “OK, Boomer,” which I guess is a pejorative term aimed at my generation for being out-of-touch with the modern world.  (See the Vox article here.)  Truth be told, maybe we are out of touch, at least about some things. As someone who grew up without a laptop or an iPhone, and whose family had a rotary phone on the wall, with…

In the “Cheese Shop” sketch from the old Monty Python comedy series, John Cleese plays a customer trying to buy some cheese from “Ye National Cheese Emporium, purveyor of fine cheese to the gentry (and the poverty-stricken too)”. The cheese shop proprietor, played by Michael Palin, seems to have no cheese in stock, not even common varieties like cheddar.  Cleese keeps trying, by asking for different and increasingly obscure types of cheese, but Palin only…

If you’re involved in the legal business for any length of time, every once in a while, you’ll come across a case in which the facts are so horrible, and the result so seemingly wrongheaded, that you can’t help but feel that our entire system has failed. A recent decision from the Third Circuit, Arena v. RiverSource Life Insurance Co., which you can read here, sadly falls into that category. Christine Arena was a…

Because most people think that insurance law is about as exciting as watching grass grow, I try to be somewhat entertaining in these posts. Probably I usually fail, but at least I keep myself amused. If there’s one thing that we wannabe comedians hate, though, it’s being upstaged. I was recently reading a decision from a federal appeals court in a case called Sterngold Dental, LLC v. HDI Insurance Company, and the judge who wrote…

In Billy Wilder’s 1944 film noir masterpiece, “Double Indemnity,” Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) seduces insurance agent Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) into murdering her husband to collect on his accident policy. (Who knew insurance could be so seedy?)  The suspicious and relentless claims adjuster, Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), eventually gets to the bottom of the scheme, and along the way, delivers a great (and hilariously overdramatic) movie speech about the important role his job plays: “Desk…