While legal malpractice insurance is a necessity, overpaying for it is not. One key to getting the best rate for legal malpractice insurance is showing the insurance underwriter a law practice that’s set up to be low-risk.
2011AP1487 Palkowski v. Acuity
2011AP1487 Palkowski v. Acuity
A Wisconsin couple learned in 2007 that their vacation home had been rendered uninhabitable because of bat guano that had piled up in the walls. Last week, the state supreme court compounded their troubles by deciding that the loss wasn’t covered by their insurance.
From time to time, I hear people say something like, “It’s not only important the judicial system be fair; it is important the judicial system be perceived as fair.”
The cost of malpractice insurance is an issue for every lawyer.
The cost of malpractice insurance is an issue for every lawyer. Annual malpractice premiums cost thousands of dollars, often straining the ability of small firms and sole practitioners to purchase when premiums approach 10 percent or more of their income on a product they likely will never need.
2011AP42 Winter v. Seneca, Sigel Mut. Ins. Co.
2010AP2435 Peterson v. American Family Mutual Insurance Company, et al.
2011AP167 Elliott v. General Casualty Company of Wisconsin
Two cases pending in the Wisconsin Supreme Court this term should clarify the meanings of two common exclusions in insurance policies: pollution exclusions in homeowner policies and motorized vehicle exclusions in farm policies.
2010AP1835 The Selmer Company v. Selective Insurance Company of South Carolina, et al.
Insurance
Title insurance; duty to defend
Insurance
Releases; extrinsic evidence
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 [...]
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 [...]
Insurance
ERISA
Insurance
Subrogation; collateral source rule
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
