When Driving Through Somebody’s Living Room Is Not Negligence Every day in America vehicles leave the roadway, travel across well-manicured lawns, smash through garden sheds, patio furniture, swing sets, and plow through the walls of a home, coming to rest inside of somebody’s living room or bedroom. These incidents leave millions of dollars in property…
Complex litigation and subrogation cases involving product liability and/or technical issues frequently require opinion testimony in the form of expert witnesses. The role of the expert is to educate lay judges and juries who lack knowledge about a particular issue or technology involved in a case. This includes everything from the design of a complex…
Approximately 12% to 14% of all accidents result in a total loss, a number which has been trending upward since 2002. Insurance companies faced with first-party claims on policies are responsible for paying the actual cash value or market value of an insured’s vehicle so the insured can replace it with a similar vehicle. In…
When dealing with photographs taken of other people, prudence requires that we consider the legal rights of the subject and the ethics of publishing the photo without their permission. Since the advent of digital photography, photographs have played a big role on the internet. Click. Upload. Post. Never has it been so easy and inexpensive…
Imagine opening the door to your condominium (“condo”) only to be confronted by several inches of standing water. The first call is to your insurance company, which must then consider not only mitigating, adjusting, and paying the claim, but subrogating against those responsible for the loss. Determining who is liable for such damage can be…
Montana businesses are learning the hard way the cost of electing a Democrat governor. The Montana legislature represents a solid, common sense, Republican majority which understands the vital role that a business-friendly environment plays in stimulating the real job creators – small businesses. On April 20, 2015, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 288, which made…
Tort and subrogation cases continue to be heavily mined and booby-trapped with potential spoliation danger. However, the law in this area is far from clear. In the case of Brookshire Brothers v. Aldridge, 438 S.W.3d 9 (Tex. 2014), Jerry Aldridge slipped and fell at a Brookshire Brothers’ grocery store on September 2, 2004. On the…
The claims history of most domestic insurance carriers is littered with billion dollar claims as a result of catastrophic losses caused by natural disasters. When God sends a hurricane, tornado, flood, or naturally-occurring fire, the resulting losses can be enough to put many insurance companies into receivership. With no third parties or obvious subrogation potential,…
What if the deck was stacked in such a way that insureds and tortfeasors could gerrymander and structure a tort settlement so as to ensure that the insured would never be “made whole”? Surely such ability would be a legal absurdity in a state where subrogation is supposedly favored for all of the societal benefits…
One of the recurring questions Matthiesen, Wickert & Lehrer, S.C. (MWL) is called on to answer involves when and under what circumstances the insured suffering automobile property damage, or his or her subrogated automobile insurer, may recover for diminution in value of a damaged automobile. This article is intended to provide a global answer to…