An Alaska politician once said of the folks she grew up with, "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity." But those virtues don’t exactly leap out of the story behind Williams v. Geico Cas. Co., No. S–14089 (Alaska Jan. 25, 2013), which mostly has to do with alcohol, selfishness and stupidity. At the climax of this sordid tale, a party to the lawsuit argued that an insurer’s refusal to offer policy limits for a release of only one ... Keep Reading »
Federal Court Refuses to Let Insured Shoot First, Seek Coverage Later
at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the issue has been taken up passionately by both sides of the dispute over gun violence. Did the murderers in Newtown and Aurora kill in large numbers because they were able to fire many shots quickly, and without reloading, as Sen. Lautenberg believes? Or, as a Wall Street Journal editorial recently suggested, can the proliferation of mass killings be more reasonably attributed to the practice of designating “gun-free zones” in ... Keep Reading »
Reading Teleology Leaves: “Condominium” Exclusion Does Not Apply to Unsold Apartment
As every lawyer knows, Aristotle distinguished four types of explanation, or “cause,” for natural phenomena. The “final cause” is “that for the sake of which” a thing is what it is. In nature, the final cause can be the end of a series of developmental changes that typical members of a species undergo: the chicken is the final cause of the egg, the oak the final cause of the acorn. This blog recently discussed a case in which the Supreme Court of South Dakota invoked ... Keep Reading »
Complaint Charges that Law Firm Ads Deceptively Omitted Coverage Defenses
Selling insurance can be hard, because it can involve making simple statements about complex products. Brokers and agents (as well as insurers) can sometimes be held responsible for their customers’ failure to understand those complexities. A few months ago, New York’s Court of Appeals held that even a corporation’s failure to read its own policy did not bar its claim against its insurance broker for an allegedly negligent failure to obtain certain liability coverage. ... Keep Reading »
To Boldly Go Where No Insurance Has Gone Before: New Mexico Redefines Portable Coverage
You might have missed the arrival of the future, but Wikipedia now reports matter-of-factly that Spaceport America “is a spaceport located in” a desert basin in New Mexico. (The only surprising fact is that the nearest town is called “Truth or Consequences.”) This month, a company called “Virgin Galactic,” a member of the Virgin Group that plans to provide sub-orbital spaceflights to “space tourists,” is scheduled to make its first monthly rent payment on the $209 ... Keep Reading »
What’s in a Proper Name? Coverage Opinions Take Different Approaches
In his 1892 paper, “On Sense and Reference,” Gottlob Frege, the German philosopher who inspired the work of Bertrand Russell, explained that the definition of a word or name can have two components. One, “reference” (or “referent”), is simply the person or object to which the word refers. The “reference” of “Napoleon Bonaparte” is the French emperor who bore that name. The second element, “sense,” is the name’s “mode of presentation,” which reflects the manner in ... Keep Reading »
Live Free of Actual Knowledge or Coverage Will Die
In September 2012, the highest court of the Granite State reversed a decision that rescinded an insurance contract on the basis of a material false statement in the application. The Supreme Court held that rescission was unavailable, because the policy was ambiguous. The court suggested, in other words, that an insurance policy must clearly express the insurer’s intention not to be forced to provide coverage on the basis of misrepresentations. Parties to other types ... Keep Reading »
A Porous Border: Insurers Finding it Hard to Exclude Coverage for Additional Insureds
Landlords and tenants, contractors and sub-contractors, even fathers and sons often establish relationships that make one party potentially liable for the acts of the other. One way to manage the risk these relationships create is for one party to add the other to its liability insurance policy as an additional insured. On the other side, insurers try to limit their exposure to additional insureds by defining coverage in a way that applies only to risks the additional ... Keep Reading »
The Limits of the Real: Narrow Readings of Policy Terms put Losses in a Virtual Realm
Ludwig Wittgenstein famously declared that “[t]he world is everything that is the case.” In three recent cases involving liability policies, courts remind us that injury can occur beyond the limits of the world that consists of “property”—or even of “substance.” 1. PPI Technology Services, L.P., was hired to “assist in well-planning” on three oil leases in Boudreaux, Louisiana. Its responsibilities included overseeing the drilling of wells. When PPI dug an empty ... Keep Reading »
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