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‘Matching Regulations’ Affecting Homeowners’ Insurance Claims: Viewpoint

It remains one of the most difficult issues to deal with in the world of property insurance. Homeowners’ insurance policies usually contain a provision obligating the carrier to repair or replace an insured’s damaged property with “material of like kind …

Demystifying Specialty, Wholesale, Surplus Lines and Specialty-Admitted Insurance

Subrogation professionals are often required to deal with a variety of insurance companies, including those admitted or licensed to transact business in a particular state and those which are not. Understanding the difference can assist the claims handler and subrogation …

How to Get Paid for Being Use-Less: Understanding Loss of Use Claims

When a negligent driver causes damage to another vehicle in an accident, most states allow the owner of the damaged vehicle to recover damages in tort for the reasonable cost of repairing or replacing the vehicle along with the monetary …

Who Let the Dogs Out? Subrogating Dog Bite Cases

One insurance company – State Farm – has referred to dog bites as a “serious public health problem.” Last year alone, one carrier paid $90 million in claims on roughly 3,500 dog bite incidents. According to the Insurance Information Institute, …

Subrogation Savoir-Faire: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You

Oh, that it wasn’t so, but today’s world of insurance claims adjusting, subrogation and civil litigation rewards the ability of one party to take advantage of what the other party doesn’t know. A civil trial is known as an “adversary …

Why Did the Plaintiff Cross the Road?

Understanding Pedestrian and Crosswalk Laws in All 50 States Every year approximately 76,000 pedestrians suffer injuries when they are struck by a moving vehicle. Beginning in 2016, America experienced a significant increase in the number of pedestrian fatalities, and in …

Subrogating the Deer in the Headlights

One day last month our firm received three separate, unrelated subrogation claim files involving serious personal injury, property damage, and a death resulting from tractor-trailers whose drivers had swerved to avoid colliding with a deer on the highway. In two …

Tautology and the Art of Listening

We only hear half of what we listen to. Perhaps that is why most people instinctively use tautology when they write or speak. Tautology is the use of different words to say the same thing or repeating the same thing …

Ambiguous Grant Of Collapse Coverage Construed In Policyholder’s Favor

Invoking the familiar insurance contract interpretation doctrine of California and other jurisdictions, that truly ambiguous policy wording must be construed against the insurer drafting it, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California decided on August 16, 2018 …

Why Molten Lava and Insurance Don’t Mix: Subrogating Pele and the Goddess of Fire

In the Hawaiian religion, Tūtū Pele is the goddess of fire and volcanoes and the creator of the Hawaiian Islands. Hawaiians believe Kilauea to be inhabited by a “family of fire gods”, one of the sisters being Pele, who is …

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