Coming In October !
The first volume of the New Appleman on Insurance Law Library Edition will be published in October. The eventually 14-volume set will comprise an analysis of insurance law for the 21st Century. It will be written by scores of authors writing in their fields of expertise because no small number of authors can possibly have expertise over the vast and varied gamut of insurance law today. The Library Edition will impart wisdom and clarity. And that is what is needed in an insurance analytical product today. Attorneys, researchers and readers no longer need a treatise laden with voluminous footnotes listing dozens of court decisions for each sentence of text. They know how to find cases on point. That’s not their problem. On the contrary, they now have to deal with this century’s information explosion. With a click they are confronted with a surfeit of court decisions and commentaries on the law. What they need is to cut through the chaff to gain a command of insurance law and so the Library Edition clearly identifies the leading case on a settled question of law, provide illustrative cases where they will be illuminative and further identifies and discusses majority and minority positions on unsettled issues of law. In sum, the Library Edition provides the wisdom and clarity that will enable litigants to win in court and in settlement negotiations and facilitate counselors to provide sound and optimal advice to clients. And that is because of our authors.
Here are a few brief examples:
The author of Chapter 1, “What Is Insurance?”, is Robert Jerry, II, the Dean of the University of Florida College of Law. He is the distinguished Levin Mabie & Levin Professor of Law at the Law School. He is the author of the full length book Understanding Insurance Law (Lexis). Thus, he literally wrote THE book on the subject of this chapter: What is the nature of insurance?
Chapter 2 on Agents and Brokers was written by Douglas R. Richmond, the Senior Vice President, Aon Global Professional Practice, of Aon Risk Services, the world’s largest broker of insurance for professional services firms. He is co-author of Understanding Insurance Law (4th Ed. Lexis) and co-editor of the New Appleman Insurance Law Practice Guide and author of a chapter in that publication on Agents and Brokers liability.
Chapter 7, Dispute Resolution, examining issues that arise under all methods of resolving insurance coverage disputes including settlement, arbitration, mediation and litigation was written by a team of four litigation attorneys of Covington & Burling. One of the authors is vice-chair for Covington’s Insurance Practice Group. That sagacity and practical know-how is reflected in their chapter. The contents of the chapter are limited to targeted goals for the insurance lawyer market: (1) Provide an overview of each process that insurance lawyers need to know, how each process works, the sequence of each process and major issues that arise under each process; (2) Provide the legal doctrines and cases that expose the issues and how they can be used to navigate through insurance dispute issues; and (3) Focus on issues unique to coverage disputes or issues that commonly arise in insurance coverage disputes. The chapter is useful to new lawyers as they are not often well-exposed to the use of alternate dispute resolution methods and the issues they engender in law school, yet arbitration is often used to resolve insurance coverage disputes, in fact directors and officers insurance policies often insert a mandatory arbitration clause. The chapter is also of significant help to experienced insurance coverage attorneys as it tackles esoteric legal issues and shows both sides in an insurance dispute can use legal doctrines and cases to advance their positions and overcome problems. On example is how to establish or destroy diversity of citizenship federal jurisdiction when Lloyds of London is either suing or being sued.
The chapter examines various down-to-earth scenarios such as one or more of the disputants may have an incentive to delay or avoid disclosing the existence of a coverage issue or its position on that issue. The chapter weighs the different consequences of disclosure and non-disclosure for the insurer and policyholder. It considers the impact of the settlement on non-settling parties and their options. Similarly, the section on arbitrations hones in on issues unique to the arbitration of insurance coverage disputes such as the effect of an insurer’s denial of coverage on the insurer’s right to demand compliance with an arbitration clause in the insurance policy.
The author of Chapter 8 on the framework of insurance regulation is Gary M. Cohen, a partner and member of the leading insurance law firm of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal’s Insurance Regulatory Practice. He has more than 25 years of uniquely diverse experience as (1) an in-house counsel, (2) a state regulator and (3) a litigator. Mr. Cohen came to Sonnenschein from Fireman's Fund Insurance Company, where as Chief Counsel he was responsible for the company's insurance law, regulatory and state government affairs groups. He also served as Deputy General Counsel of Allianz of America Corporation. In addition, he was Deputy Commissioner and General Counsel of the California Department of Insurance.
This year LexisNexis is launching the first two volumes of the Library Edition, the first devoted to Essentials of Insurance Law and the second devoted to Insurance Regulation. Next year LexisNexis will be launching volumes devoted to liability issues in separate lines of insurance, such as commercial general liability, property, casualty, life, etc. and they will include references to ISO forms and Miller’s Annotations of those forms for those separate lines of insurance. The Library Edition will be organized by lines of insurance and will be organized to meet practitioners’ workflow and real needs.
The Library Edition not only provides incisive analysis of the fundamental concepts of insurance law, but also delves into the contemporary nuances and issues on the cutting edges of their topics. For example, Chapter 1 on the nature of insurance explains that many contracts transfer risk but are not insurance contracts. And the distinction is crucial because if a contract involves insurance it is subject to a distinct and comprehensive set of state government laws and regulations as well as thousands of court decisions on issues involving disputes between insurers and policyholders. The chapter explains in crystal clear terms the fundamental concepts and assumptions that are unique to insurance law and are critical to an understanding of insurance law. It analyzes the different ways insurance is classified so that readers can discern what principles are applicable to their situations. But it goes further, examining today’s efforts to stretch the definition of the meaning of insurance through captives, fronting arrangements and new types of financial arrangements which are used like insurance.
Chapter 6 on choice of law issues was written by a team of five attorneys who are members of McKenna Long & Aldridge’s Insurance and Financial Institutions Practice Group. It not only thoroughly examines the various tests used to resolve often decisive conflicts of law between domestic jurisdictions, but delves into international choice of law issues which are becoming of increased importance in our global economy, especially with the majority of reinsurers of domestic insurance policies coming from abroad.
Likewise the chapters on various aspects of the regulation of the insurance industry, not only provide a sound grounding in today’s various state regulatory structures, but also recognize the potential threats to the status quo of state regulation in the wake of the AIG bailout and the pervasive financial crisis. Accordingly, they plunge foursquare into the many proposals for federal government involvement to various degrees in the regulation of insurance companies.
In future years, the Library Edition will include new volumes covering topics that have become increasingly important in recent years such as: insolvency, subrogation, and international insurance issues. Compact and insightful, the New Appleman on Insurance Law Library Edition will provide a framework for apprehending both the fundamentals and the nuances of insurance law for today’s practitioners.
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