National Insurance Law Forum : Insurance Litigation Lawyer & Attorney : National Insurance Law Forum : Insurance Coverage, Bad Faith Litigation

The LexisNexis Insurance Law Center is receiving nominations for the Center’s “Insurance Law Persons of the Year” award. The award seeks to identify and recognize people who have been a major force in the insurance law during the preceding year in the following categories:

Policyholder Attorney of the Year – the attorney who did the most in 2008 to effectively advance policyholder positions and improve insurance law from the perspective of policyholders.

Insurer Attorney of the Year -- the attorney who did the most in 2008 to effectively advance insurer positions and improve insurance law from the perspective of insurers.

Insurance Regulator of the Year – the international, federal, state, or local regulator who had most impact during 2008.

Insurance Jurist of the Year -- the judge or justice whose rulings had the largest impact on insurance law during 2008.

Nominations will be considered by the Lexis Insurance Center Board, which plans to release a list of finalists at the Center’s website.  Please send nominations to karen.yotis@lexisnexis.com no later than March 6, 2009.
 

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As the storm clouds gather over once might insurance companies, law firms representing insurers should bear in mind the on-going lessons of the insolvency of Home.  Lawyers representing an insurer in perilous financial circumstances face the dilemma of trying to protect their client’s interests even in the face of looming insolvency while trying to avoid being left holding the bag with a large unpaid bill. Such was the unhappy fate of the Sheiness law firm of Houston, Texas in the latest opinion of the New Hampshire Supreme Court arising out of the June 2003 insolvency of the Home Insurance Company.

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Casualty coverage litigation has been dominated by five issues this decade: allocation, recoupment, the scope of the absolute pollution exclusion, coverage for breach of contract claims and multiple “occurrences.” The last issue has been the most surprising as, until recently, parties were reluctant to take positions on an issue that might hurt them in future claims. Now the state supreme courts of Illinois and Wisconsin have joined the fray.

The Illinois Supreme Court’s opinion in Addison Ins. Co. v. Faye, No. 105752 (Ill. January 23, 2009) is the more surprising of the two, if only because the court focused on the burden of proof issue, an aspect of this dispute that has received surprisingly little attention from other courts. At the same time, given that the outcome of the case essentially turned on a “tie goes to the winner” analysis, one must wonder what attracted the court to the case in the first place.

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