Insurance Law

The Soft Parade of Dubious Risk Management Techniques

Posted on August 25, 2009
If you were looking for a counter-example to the proposition that "Republican elected officials can be counted upon, at all times, to side with Large Corporate Interests," you need look no further than the relationship between Florida's Republican Governor Charlie...

Priceless, But Not Compensable in California:
No Emotional Distress or Loss of Companionship Damages for the Death of a Pet

Posted on August 01, 2009
In late 2004, I wrote about the Bluestone case, in which a jury in Orange County, California, awarded a dog owner damages for his distress and loss of companionship in his suit against the veterinarians whose negligence was found to...

Crusading Knight vs. Crusading Lawyer

Posted on April 07, 2009
Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight has a bone to pick with New York arts lawyer (and proprietor of The Art Law Blog) Donn Zaretsky. In a post to the LAT's Culture Monster blog, "How not to deregulate art...

Fool Moon and Empty Arms: The April Fool's Blawg Review Appendix Has Risen

Posted on April 01, 2009
April Fool's Day has come upon us and, as is traditional, an extra edition of Blawg Review -- the April Fool's Blawg Review Appendix 2009 -- is posted to my more personal blog, a fool in the forest. Thematically, it...

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Blawg Review #205

Posted on March 30, 2009
Welcome to Blawg Review #205, the Music of the Spheres edition. The English composer Gustav Holst (1874-1934) was hugely prolific, but he is unquestionably best known for his orchestral suite, The Planets. Composed between 1914 and 1916, the work was...

The Courthouse with a Heart Full of Sol

Posted on March 25, 2009
The intersection of art and law has been a recurring topic here at Decs&Excs, especially when one declines to yield the right of way to the other. One subset of that topic has been courthouses of artistic or architectural interest....

Coming Attractions

Posted on March 23, 2009
The continuing and profound silence in this space will again be broken no later than next Monday, March 30, as it will be my pleasure for the fourth year running to host a new edition of Blawg Review, the weekly...

12 Artsy Men

Posted on January 10, 2009
Perhaps you have heard of juried art exhibitions, but what about jurors' art exhibitions?Anne Reed's sterling Deliberations -- the home of Blawg Review #127, which was among Decs&Excs' nominees for 2007 Blawg Review of the Year -- is devoted to...

Limits of Coverage in "Continuous Trigger" Cases:
They Keep Going and Going and Going . . .

Posted on January 06, 2009
The Stringfellow Acid Pits of Riverside County have been spawning (spewing?) litigation for decades, both as to when, how and by whom the site must be cleaned up and as to which of the responsible parties' insurers must bear what...

Charon QC's Blawg Review # 193 -- Sinfoolly Delicious

Posted on January 05, 2009
Charon, the ferryman who transported souls across the River Styx to the realms of the dead in the myths of the Greeks, was appropriated by Dante to serve that same purpose in a more Catholic and more punitive version of...

Lessons Worth Learning, Again and Again

Posted on January 05, 2009
On occasion,appellate courts will publish a decision not because it breaks new legal ground but because it offers an opportunity to "remind" practitioners of rules that are well-settled but too often "forgotten" or "overlooked." To wrap up 2008, Curt Cutting...

The Carnival's Moved On

Posted on April 07, 2008
In the wake of my exercises in plunder and mockery, David Harlow of HealthBlawg is doing his part to restore the institutional respectability of Blawg Review in the most effective manner possible: by hosting a thorough and informative (and yes,...

Blawg Review #153

Posted on March 31, 2008
Avast! ye law-lubbing swab! Passed the Bar-nacle Exam, have ye? Familiarized yerself wi' Davey Jones' Res Ipsa Loquitur, ye say? Sailed the Chapter Seven Bankrupt Seas, even? Schooled y'are in yer directions, an' knows the diff'rence between yer Tort and...

The Amazing Fraudini!

Posted on March 25, 2008
Gloria Teasdale: I thought you left. Chicolini: Oh no. I don't leave. Gloria Teasdale: But I saw you with my own eyes. Chicolini: Well, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes? -- from Duck Soup (The Marx Brothers,...

David Rossmiller Has You Covered

Posted on March 24, 2008
". . . . Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season." -- T.S. Eliot, "Gerontion" (1920) In August, this weblog will be five years old. I do not know what the proper formula is for converting Human Years...

Arrivederci Aroma

Posted on March 19, 2008
Lloyd's of London, not Starbuck's, is almost certainly history's most important coffee house, and the Lloyd's markets are justifiably famous for their ability to place insurance coverage for unusual risks, as exemplified by this list of 9 Odd Things Insured...

This is the Jurist Primeval

Posted on March 06, 2008
I have not maintained a membership in the Los Angeles County Bar Association for a decade or so, but I remain on some of the Association's email distribution lists. This morning, I received notice of an upcoming seminar revisiting --...

Tie Goes to the Dumpster

Posted on March 01, 2008
Los Angeles is better known for tight abs and botox than it is for tuxes and bow ties -- but we were supposed to have had a truly Enormous sculptured bow tie to festoon a space in front of the...

Blawg Review Nominations

Posted on December 31, 2007
Shirley Temple: Golly gee, Mr. Disney! What are all these little statues for? Walt Disney: Well first, Shirley, I need to ask you politely to take your dimpled mitts off of that large statue, because that one's mine. Heh, heh....

Bless His Pointed Little Head Monuments

Posted on December 27, 2007
New Horizons in Intellectual Property Law Lee Rosenbaum's CultureGrrl weblog links an intriguing Guardian report: "Egypt to copyright the pyramids and antiquities": Egypt is planning to pass a law that would exact royalty payments from anyone found making copies of...

You Do Know How to ERISA, Don't You?

Posted on December 27, 2007
This weblog is usually more focused on property/casualty insurance issues, but everybody knows that health insurance is where much of the political action is. Only ten days ago, Stephen Rosenberg's Boston ERISA Law Blog looked westward to examine recent bipartisan...

"You Can't Fool Me: There Ain't No Sanity Clause"

Posted on December 25, 2007
At this season of kindness, calmness, sweetness and good cheer, let us wish for a world in which every legal negotiation could be as simple as this one: Marx Brothers - Sanity Clause Chico is mistaken, of course, although the...

New Horizons in Electoral Litigiositude

Posted on December 18, 2007
The disturbing thing is that someone, somewhere is very likely drafting this complaint right now.....

Coming Soon to the Albert Hall . . .

Posted on November 28, 2007
More DANGEROUS ART! Item 1: From New York Magazine, a description of You by Urs Fischer, now on view in Manhattan at Gavin Brown's enterprise gallery: A 38-foot-by-30-foot crater, eight feet deep, extends almost to the walls of the gallery,...

Crack of Doom

Posted on November 27, 2007
And now, another episode of DANGEROUS ART! Now on view in the enormous Turbine Hall of London's Tate Modern museum is Colombian artist Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth, of which the curators write: Doris Salcedo?s Shibboleth is the first work to intervene....

Band Advocates on the Run

Posted on November 12, 2007
You run 26 miles, and what do you get? You get Eric Turkewitz and his epic marathon-themed take on Blawg Review #134, at New York Personal Injury Law Blog. Stock up on fluids, set aside the necessary time for training...

Stata Me Up

Posted on November 06, 2007
Photo by Stephen Downes via Flickr, under Creative Commons license. This is the Stata Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, designed by renowned architect, Frank Gehry. (That link leads to the site of a 2001 exhibition on Gehry at...

Don't Say You Weren't Warned

Posted on November 04, 2007
Now here's a model of forward-thinking risk management from which many an industrialist might profit: Via Dr. Boli?s Celebrated Magazine, for the discovery of which please join me in thanking Megan McArdle. ~~~ FOR ADDITIONAL CONTINUING LEGAL EDUCATION CREDIT: DR...