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Religious Institutions Update: April 2013

Implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is in full swing. The law requires non-exempt religious organizations with fewer than 50 full-time employees to determine whether they are a large...more

Arizona Upholds $54 Million Reduction of Punitive Damages in Insurance Bad Faith Case

The Arizona Court of Appeals recently upheld a trial court's reduction of a $55 million punitive damages award to only $620,000 and further reduced the punitive damages to $155,000-a 1:1 ratio to compensatory damages....more

Florida Supreme Court Rules on Conflict Between Hospital Liens and Insurance Coverage in a Car Accident Case: Shands Teaching...

After a woman received an insurance settlement for injuries she sustained in a car accident, a dispute arose between the insurance company and the hospital that treated her over payment of the hospital’s lien. In many...more

Broadening Application Of The Filed Rate Doctrine

Originally published in Competition Law360 on September 13, 2012. Ninety years ago Justice Brandeis delivered the opinion in Keogh v. Northwestern Railway Co., 260 U.S. 156 (1922), and based on four policy reasons,...more

Ohio State and Federal Courts Reject Class Actions Alleging That Life Insurers Have an Affirmative Duty to Undertake Death Matches

Originally published in Life Insurance Law Committee Newsletter, Summer 2012. In three putative class actions brought by private plaintiffs seeking to require life insurers to undertake death matches, Ohio state and...more

Legal Byte: Inconsistent & Alternative Pleading to Trigger Insurance Coverage

Can a plaintiff plead inconsistent theories of relief/liability, such as negligence (which is unintentional) and fraud (which is intentional), for any reason, including for the purpose of triggering insurance coverage?...more

Some Proponents of Obamacare Have Been Selling Constitutional Snake Oil

In a letter to the editor of The Wall Street Journal (April 26, 2012, at A14), Charles E. Rounds, Jr. refutes the suggestion made by Prof. Alan S. Blinder of Princeton University in an April 20, 2012 op-ed in the same paper...more

Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments on Health Care Reform: Will the Affordable Care Act Survive?

After three days of oral arguments last week, the fate of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) now lies in the hands of the nine Supreme Court justices. What, if any, provisions of the sweeping health care...more

Supreme Court Hears Arguments on Health Care Law

The Supreme Court heard arguments this week about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, in preparation for a ruling on whether aspects of the massive health care overhaul are allowable under the...more

U.S. Supreme Court – Day Three of Oral Arguments on the Affordable Care Act

Today, morning oral arguments in the Supreme Court focused on the issue of “severability,” that is, if the Court decides that the individual mandate (the subject of Day Two oral arguments) is unconstitutional, can the rest of...more

U.S. Supreme Court – Day Two of Oral Arguments on the Affordable Care Act

Today’s Supreme Court oral arguments centered on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) “individual mandate” (also known as the “minimal coverage provision”), the requirement, beginning in 2014, for all...more

U.S. Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments For Constitutional Challenge of Affordable Care Act – Day One

Just over two years after President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), yesterday the United States Supreme Court heard its first of three consecutive days of oral arguments in Department of...more

U.S. Supreme Court – Day One of Oral Arguments on the Affordable Care Act

The U.S. Supreme Court today heard the first of four sets of oral arguments challenging key provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) (Department of Health and Human Services, et al. v. Florida, et...more

Legal Alert: Supreme Court Sets Dates for Arguments on Health Care Law Challenges

The U.S. Supreme Court has announced the dates for oral argument in the lawsuits challenging the validity of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). The Court will hear five and one-half hours of oral...more

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Damage from permanent disability

At the next joint of a person who as suffered severe injures as a result af an accident it is compensation for non patrimonial damages suffered as a result of the event,which must also include the beat.Evidence of such damage...more

Eleventh Circuit Concludes Significant Litigation Involving Surplus Lines Carrier

On January 18, 2011, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Essex Insurance Co. v. Zota brought an end to seven years of litigation and four appellate proceedings, when it affirmed a final declaratory judgment entered in...more

Oliver v Smith et al.

Michigan Court of Appeals Extends "Good Faith" Immunity to Intentional Torts of Assault and Battery and Excessive Force

Oliver v. Smith, attached, is a “published” Court of Appeals opinion that extends the Supreme Court’s “good faith” standard established in the 2008 Odom v Wayne County decision, a case which I...more

Notes on Oral Argument Before the California Supreme Court on Applicability of the CLRA to "Insurance"

This past Monday, the California Supreme Court heard oral argument on the issue of whether California's Consumer Legal Remedies Act (CLRA) applies to "insurance." As discussed in previous posts, the Fairbanks decision, when...more