906 research outputs found
Improving State Regulation of Homeowners Insurance: The Essential Protections for Policyholders Project
No full textHomeowners insurance provides financial security for 70 million American households and stability to the communities in which they live—but only when it works. Homeowners insurance only works because it is supported and regulated by state law. This article describes the Essential Protections for Policyholders project, which aims to make state regulation and therefore homeowners insurance itself work better. As a project of the Rutgers Center for Risk and Responsibility at Rutgers Law School in cooperation with United Policyholders, Essential Protections for Policyholders draws on academic research, an extensive survey of state law, and practical experience. The Essential Protections for Policyholders project addresses market conduct regulation, focusing on key elements of the relationship between insurance companies and their policyholders. It aims to improve the market for insurance, to address deficiencies in the market, and to provide effective means of validating the insurance relation in case of loss. In each area, the project identifies a series of general principles that motivate the particular analysis and recommendations. Then the principles are given more detail in recommendations about the direction state regulation should take. In most cases, recommended statutory language is included. The recommendations are based on a discussion of the issue and a survey of current law. A unique feature of the project is that it rests on an extensive national database of state law regulating homeowners insurance. The database of law in the fifty-one jurisdictions also provides a basis for comparing and evaluating individual states’ current systems of regulation. Part of the project is to prepare scorecards comparing states’ homeowners protections on a variety of issues. The full report and other information about the Essential Protections for Policyholders project is available at epp.law.rutgers.edu
Attorney-Client Privilege and Work-Product Protection in Insurance Bad Faith Litigation
No full textThis article explores two issues that often arise in litigation over insurance claim practices, commonly referred to as bad faith litigation. In first-party bad faith litigation, the policyholder is entitled to receive in discovery a copy of the insurer’s "claim file"—the record of the insurer’s investigation and evaluation of the claim that underlies the dispute. Insurers often seek to protect elements of the claim file from disclosure under one or both of two theories: attorney-client privilege or work-product doctrine. Litigation collateral to the main issues in the case inevitably ensues about whether the protection claimed is applicable.
The doctrines that control these disputes are not uniform among the jurisdictions, but the structure of the doctrinal analysis is widely accepted. For attorney-client privilege, two questions direct the inquiry. First, was the insurer a client seeking and did the lawyer provide legal assistance, which would be within the scope of the privilege,or was the attorney engaged in the ordinary investigation and evaluation of a claim, in which case the privilege does not attach? Second, even if that element of the standard is met, is there some exception to the privilege such that it does not apply? For work-product protection, the key issue is whether the documents at issue were prepared in the ordinary course of the insurer’s business in processing the claim or in anticipation of litigation. Under both of these doctrines, there is not a consensus on results but there is an accepted way of framing disputes.
In any endeavor, where one starts has much to do with where one ends up. This article starts from an understanding of the practices an insurer uses in processing a claim and its obligations to a policyholder in doing so, rather than starting from a formulation of the two doctrines. Starting there leads to different conclusions and supports a principle common to both doctrines: Neither attorney-client privilege nor work-product protection attaches to any communication made before the insurer has made a final determination on the claim and communicated that determination to the insured.Peer reviewe
Contract and claim in insurance law
No full textThis article offers a new perspective on insurance law by examining and combining two basic features of insurance and insurance law: the nature of the insurance contract and the fact that most insurance law issues concern a disputed claim. Insurance law scholars are fond of reconceptualizing their subject. Insurance policies and insurance law have been likened to a means of public utility regulation, a product warranty, a social institution, or, perhaps mostly simply, a thing. This article represents another conceptualization of the subject, and one that may be less foreign to the subject and closer to the reality of the formation and performance of insurance relationships.
Every insurance policy is a contract between the policyholder and the insurer. Fundamentally, however, almost every insurance law problem, dispute, or doctrine is really about paying or not paying claims. These two features—contract and claim—are at the heart of most insurance law disputes. The significance of insurance as contract is generally recognized, but the centrality of claims, less so. The article examines each of them separately and then combines them. Doing so provides a perspective on a large number of insurance law issues, and that perspective should change the courts’ approach to a number of issues and doctrines. The focus is on personal lines, particularly first-party insurance, but the analysis also has implications in other settings.
The article first presents the contract and claim analysis. It then applies the analysis to several common issues in insurance law. The illustrations come from three different points in the life of an insurance policy. The first concerns a formation issue: when an insurer may use misstatements by a policyholder in the application process to avoid coverage. The second, and most general, addresses interpretation issues that concern the insurer’s performance of the insurance contract. The third concerns issues of policyholder and insurer performance after a claim is filed—the false swearing rule and the law of insurance bad faith. All three reinforce the insight that every doctrinal issue involves a conception of the insurance contract and arises because of a disputed claim. The discussion demonstrates that courts sometimes use similar analysis, describes those tendencies, suggests why they are incomplete, and uses the contract and claim analysis to make them explicit and more comprehensive. Other courts take quite different approaches; contrasting those approaches with the contract and claim analysis demonstrates what they get wrong. The result is both a demonstration of the usefulness of the article’s analysis and a beginning catalog of how it can reshape insurance law doctrine
Insurance Fraud, Agency, and Opportunism: False Swearing in Insurance Claims
No full textThis paper discusses the law of insurance fraud at the point of claim, what in the United States is known as the “false swearing” doctrine. It situates that doctrine within the broader landscape of both the claims process and of responses to insurance fraud. It suggests the proper contours of the doctrine and the applicable standard of proof and changes in other doctrines that address the particular problem of false swearing and the broader problem of agency and opportunism in insurance claims by both insured and insurer. The false swearing doctrine should require reliance by the insurer and proof by clear and convincing evidence, and the insurer’s conduct in asserting fraud should be evaluated by a reasonableness standard
Critical teaching
No full textThis is a reflection on the engagement of the critical legal studies movement with law school teaching, focused on the teaching of private law
Critical teaching
No full textThis paper is a discussion of the engagement of the critical legal studies movement with law school teaching, focused on the teaching of private law. CLS criticized and offered alternatives to every element of the existing model of law teaching. Because the teaching project was driven by the broader CLS scholarly project, the critique and alternatives were thorough-going, integrated, and explicit in a way that gave them power, heightened the contrast with traditional approaches, and resulted in better teaching.
"Overcoming America's Infrastructure Deficit, A Fiscally Responsible Plan for Public Capital Investment"
Full text linkCondemned bridges, dilapidated school buildings, contaminated water supplies, and other infrastructure shortcomings threaten American growth, productivity, and prosperity. S Jay Levy and Walter M. Cadette propose a plan for financing infrastructure projects that is designed to have minimal effect on the federal budget and to promote sound fiscal operation. Federal zero-interest mortgage loans to state and local governments for capital projects specified by Congress can cut the cost of such projects, achieve needed improvements in the nation's infrastructure, and thereby contribute to the American economy's future.
MEASURING NET BENEFITS RESULTING FROM UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY COLLABORATION: AN EXAMPLE FROM THE NEW MEXICO CHILE TASK FORCE
Full text linkResearch and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,
2006 Southwest Agribusiness Conference proceedings
No full textIntroduction & overview; The Hass avocado industry: Expanding market demand; The value of market information; Market development opportunities: The power of partnership; Sourcing products: The prepared mexican food market; Commercial organic and sustainable agriculture as a business strategy;Report containing proceedings from the 2006 Southwest Agribusiness Conference held in Las Cruces, New Mexico, in October, 2006
The Effects of Bullying on Hannah Baker Reflected on Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why Novel (2007): A Sociological Perspective
Full text linkThis study focuses on the effect of bullying on Hannah Baker reflected on Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reason Why novel (2007). This study is a sociological perspective. This study aims to explain Hannah Baker’s bullying indicators, to depict the bullyingon Hannah Baker on Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why, to interpret the reasons of Jay Asher chooses bullying on Thirteen Reasons Why novel. There are two types of data, primary data and secondary data. There are three results of research from this novel. First, the indicators of bullying found in Thirteen Reasons Whythe novel by Jay Asher as follows gives an unpleasant look, body shaming, physical violence, ridicule, and touch a body part without permission. Second, the author describes the issue of bullying through character, events and setting. Third, the author addressed the bullying based on one of his relative's experience
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