A study conducted by scientists at the University of Miami has revealed that almost three dozen high-rise condos and luxury hotels along the beach in South Florida are sinking, and insurance companies are on high alert. To be exact, thirty-five buildings, including both luxury hotels and condominiums, have sunk between one to three inches in…
Subrogation professionals might read the title to this article and wonder what subrogation and the confounding labyrinth of insurance coverage might have in common. After all, aren’t we all comfortably nestled in the subrogation world so that we don’t have to wade through endless pages of small font, state-specific endorsements, and baffling insurance policy lexicon?…
Insurance companies are no dummies. The world’s largest insurance companies learned important lessons following previous worldwide health crises. Since the 2003 SARS pandemic, they have tightened up their policies and carefully crafted policy language excluding communicable diseases. They have anticipated the avalanche of business interruption claims which flow from worldwide catastrophes such as the Coronavirus…
On April 5, 2018, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that the operative event which triggers a notice of claim requirement in an underinsured motorist (UIM) policy is the tender of the tortfeasor’s underlying policy limit and not the accident itself. See Shugarts v. Mohr, 2018 WI 27. This holding overrules a published Wisconsin Court of…
Who covers what when an employee is involved in an accident while driving a personal vehicle for business purposes? It is a question as old as insurance itself. It should come as no surprise that the Holy Grail for trial lawyers is obtaining coverage for an employee’s personal vehicle through the employer’s commercial auto policy.…
The Iowa legislature has finally acted on the call by Iowa business groups to overhaul Iowa’s workers’ compensation system. For years, they have claimed that the state’s system has tilted unfairly toward injured workers and significantly raised employers’ costs. Many have called Iowa’s workers’ compensation system an “unsustainable litigious lottery.” In March, the changes became…
Recently, in Kaitlin Woods Condominium Ass’n v. Kaitlin Woods, LLC, et al., 2017 WL 3234370 (Wis. 2017), the Wisconsin Court of Appeals upheld a “synthetic stucco” (also known as Exterior Insulation and Finish System (EIFS)) exclusion in a commercial general liability policy. The facts of the case are quite common—damages caused by water allegedly stemming…
On May 2, 2017, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals outlined why an insurance carrier that fails to defend an insured without first seeking a judicial determination of no coverage does so at its own peril. See Country World Media Group, Inc. v. Erie Ins. Co., 2016 WI App. 1343. Wisconsin insurance carriers should take note…
Back in September 2013, we posted an article entitled “Do Liability Waivers Really Work?” The article served as a primer and cautionary tale regarding the enforceability of common liability waivers. These are the agreements required by gyms, martial arts facilities, climbing gyms, trampoline parks, and similar businesses geared toward physical activity that can be inherently…
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has recently had occasion to clarify the issue of whether extrinsic evidence can be considered in determining an insurer’s duty to defend in the case of Water Well Solutions Serv., Inc. v. Consolidated Ins. Co., 2016 WI 54 (2016). In this case, the Court refused to modify the longstanding “four-corners” rule…