POSTED: Thursday, December 1st, 2011 at 10:15 am

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

2010AP2432 Park Terrace LLC v. Transportation Insurance Company, et al.

POSTED: Thursday, December 1st, 2011 at 10:11 am

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

2010AP2908 Erie Insurance Exchange v. McLinn, et al.

POSTED: Thursday, December 1st, 2011 at 10:08 am

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

2010AP2468 Johnson v. Mt. Morris Mut. Ins. Co.

POSTED: Tuesday, November 29th, 2011 at 1:22 pm

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

2011AP42 Winter v. Seneca, Sigel Mut. Ins. Co.

POSTED: Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011 at 11:29 am

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

2010AP2435 Peterson v. American Family Mutual Insurance Company, et al.

POSTED: Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011 at 10:39 am

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

2010AP3153 Bethke v. Auto-Owners Insurance Company

POSTED: Thursday, October 27th, 2011 at 2:25 pm

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

2011AP167 Elliott v. General Casualty Company of Wisconsin

POSTED: Thursday, September 8th, 2011 at 11:12 am

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

2010AP1835 The Selmer Company v. Selective Insurance Company of South Carolina, et al.

POSTED: Tuesday, August 30th, 2011 at 10:37 am

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

Insurance
Title insurance; duty to defend

POSTED: Tuesday, August 9th, 2011 at 11:38 am

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

Insurance
Releases; extrinsic evidence

POSTED: Monday, July 11th, 2011 at 3:12 pm

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

Insurance Bankers bonds; Employee misconduct When an insured incurs liability to a third party — whether in contract or tort — as a result of employee misconduct, financial loss resulting from that liability is not “directly” caused by the employee misconduct and therefore is not covered by fidelity bonds containing direct-loss language. “The particular bond [...]

POSTED: Monday, July 11th, 2011 at 3:09 pm

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

Insurance ERISA; self-reported symptoms limitation The failure to include a self-reported symptoms limitation in the summary plan description (“SPD”) prevents an ERISA plan from relying on it to discontinue benefits. “Here, the SPD clearly sets out that long-term benefits will be discontinued after twenty-four months if a participant’s disability is due to mental illness or [...]

POSTED: Friday, July 8th, 2011 at 11:22 am

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

Insurance
ERISA

POSTED: Wednesday, June 29th, 2011 at 10:34 am

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

Insurance
Subrogation; collateral source rule

POSTED: Tuesday, June 14th, 2011 at 10:13 am

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

Insurance Bad faith An insured may file a bad faith claim without also filing a breach of contract claim. “[W]hile Jones held that a bad faith claim need not be accompanied by a breach of contract claim, it did not hold that a first-party bad faith claim need not be accompanied by a breach of [...]

POSTED: Tuesday, May 31st, 2011 at 11:58 am

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

Insurance ERISA; facility-of-payment clauses Where a life insurance policy contained a facility-of-payment clause, it did not violate ERISA for the insurer to pay the proceeds to the insured’s children. “Under the arbitrary and capricious standard, we overturn the administrator’s decision only where there is an absence of reasoning to support it. See Hess v. Reg-Ellen [...]

POSTED: Tuesday, May 24th, 2011 at 11:12 am

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

Insurance Automobile policies; negligent entrustment An insurer is not liable for its insureds’ negligent entrustment of a vehicle if the driver was not negligent in his operation of the vehicle. “Bankert and Malone teach us that there is no coverage for Koehler’s alleged negligent entrustment of the vehicle to Raddatz because that act is not [...]

POSTED: Thursday, May 5th, 2011 at 1:01 pm

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

Insurance Insureds; household residents; reformation This is an insurance policy coverage dispute arising out of a fatal car accident. Robert Poorman, Lois Poorman, and Samantha Young appeal the summary judgment granted to Farmers Automobile Insurance Association. The issue is whether a homeowner’s insurance policy Farmers issued to another man, Laurence Rusniak, provides coverage for his [...]

POSTED: Friday, April 29th, 2011 at 1:43 pm

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

Insurance ERISA Where an ERISA claimant failed to file a timely administrative appeal, the plan is not required to consider the appeal. “In this case, the Plan has fixed a clear deadline of 180 days for filing administrative appeals from denials of benefits, and the Plan has the right to enforce that deadline. Also, though [...]

POSTED: Friday, April 29th, 2011 at 1:36 pm

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

Insurance Homeowners policies; family exclusion Where a family exclusion in a homeowners policy ambiguously defines “benefit,” the exclusion does not preclude coverage. “We conclude that Allstate has failed to meet its burden to demonstrate that a benefit of coverage would accrue directly or indirectly to an insured. To the extent that the terms of the [...]

POSTED: Tuesday, April 26th, 2011 at 12:53 pm

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

Insurance Property damage Allen Balsiger appeals a summary judgment determining his maintenance of the Town of Lafayette’s property record cards was not “property damage,” and therefore, no coverage existed under his American Family Mutual Insurance Company policy. Balsiger asserts the circuit court erred by granting summary judgment because there was “property damage,” the damage was [...]

POSTED: Thursday, April 14th, 2011 at 10:04 am

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

Insurance Breach of duty; reformation Michael Rammer appeals an order dismissing his claims related to whether he should have received an insurance payment for a property loss. We affirm. This opinion will not be published. 2010AP1159 Rammer v. The RiverBank Insurance Center, Inc., et al. Dist III, Polk County, Galewyrick, J., Per Curiam Attorneys: For [...]

POSTED: Wednesday, April 13th, 2011 at 9:42 am

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

Insurance Notice of nonrenewal An occurrence that occurred more than one year after an umbrella policy expired is not covered, even though the insurer failed to provide the notice required by sec. 631.36(4)(a). “We hold that neither a violation of Wis. Stat. § 631.36(4)(a) nor the contractual language at issue results in a perpetual term [...]

POSTED: Tuesday, April 5th, 2011 at 12:07 pm

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

Insurance Duty to defend; pay and walk An insurance policy with a pay and walk clause permits the insurer to satisfy its duty to defend by paying its maximum liability. “First, we note that none of the above factors distinguishes the instant case from Novak. As explained in more detail above, the two cases are [...]

POSTED: Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011 at 1:15 pm

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

Insurance Bad faith Homestead Mutual Insurance Company appeals from a jury’s verdict that a silo on the dairy farm operated by Kris and Julie Woelfel and City View Dairy, LLC (collectively the Woelfels), collapsed due to an explosion and awarding the Woelfels bad faith and punitive damages because of Homestead’s denial of coverage for the [...]

POSTED: Tuesday, March 1st, 2011 at 12:48 pm

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

Insurance Umbrella policies; UM coverage An umbrella policy that does not specifically exclude uninsured motorist coverage provides coverage. “The second sentence provides that Auto-Owners will cover personal injury to an insured ‘to the extent that insurance is provided by an underlying policy listed in Schedule A.’ That sentence could mean that if an underlying policy [...]

POSTED: Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 at 2:27 pm

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

Insurance Intentional acts exclusion; mental illness An intentional acts exclusion in a homeowners policy applies, even if the insured lacks the mental capacity to govern his conduct. “While Wright correctly articulates Wicka’s logic, and while cases in several states do in fact hold that insanity is a bar to applying the intentional acts exclusion, we [...]

POSTED: Wednesday, January 19th, 2011 at 3:35 pm

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

Insurance Life insurance; reformation Where the owner of a life insurance policy never effectively transferred ownership to the person whose life is insured, the subsequent change in beneficiary is ineffective also. “[E]ven if we could somehow discover what Protective would have done had B&K been named an LLC, the proper focus here is not on [...]

POSTED: Wednesday, January 12th, 2011 at 12:30 pm

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

Insurance Duty to defend B.G. Lein Management Corp. and Cartlein Investments, LLC, appeal from the order granting summary judgment to West Bend Mutual Insurance Co. The court determined that West Bend did not have a duty to defend J.K. Contractors, Inc. in a suit brought against them by the appellants. Cartlein argues that the circuit [...]

POSTED: Tuesday, December 7th, 2010 at 2:56 pm

BY: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF

Insurance Reimbursement Admiral Insurance Company and Chubb Custom Insurance Company appeal a judgment dismissing their claims against their insured, Paper Converting Machine Company. Admiral and Chubb argue, on numerous grounds, that they are entitled to reimbursement for settlement payments they made because there was no policy coverage for the underlying loss. We reject Admiral’s and [...]