In Housing & Redevelopment Insurance Exchange v. Guy Carpenter & Co., a Pennsylvania federal court considered the enforceability of a forum selection clause in a services agreement between Pennsylvania-based insurer Housing...more
In 2016, Best's Review published our article titled "The Bellefonte Cap Returns." As we explained, the Cap stemmed from the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1990 in Bellefonte Reinsurance Co. v....more
The Eastern District of California recently granted partial summary judgment to a class of plaintiffs suing a reinsurer and related entities with respect to a reinsurance arrangement regarding private mortgage insurance that...more
We don’t expect many of you to remember a 1950’s song (as most weren’t yet born!), What’s Behind the Green Door.* The vocalist, Jim Lowe, was certainly not thinking about insurance when he sang it, but in the insurance world...more
The question before the Southern District of New York was whether, under English law, certain facultative reinsurance policies obligated a reinsurer to indemnify its cedent for a $20 million settlement. The finding was...more
PB Life and Annuity Co. Ltd. sought a judgment that its dispute with Universal Life Insurance Co. was subject to litigation, not arbitration. In response, Universal Life moved to compel arbitration, and PB Life sought a...more
A key question being asked in the markets is whether reinsurers are obliged to follow their cedants’ Covid-19 related settlements? Covid-19 continues to dominate the headlines and the lives of people around the world....more
The Bellefonte Cap - The Bellefonte Cap is a shorthand reference to the "reinsurance accepted" limit set forth in a facultative certificate generally capping the reinsurer's obligations with respect to loss and expense...more
On March 2, 2020, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued its long-anticipated ruling in the Global v. Century case. More than five years after applying the Bellefonte Rule to hold that a...more
The Court of Appeals of Nebraska has affirmed the dismissal of a claim under a reinsurance participation agreement based on lack of personal jurisdiction....more
We previously posted about the yearslong reinsurance dispute between Utica Mutual Insurance Co. (the cedent) and Century Indemnity Co. (the reinsurer), involving Utica’s claims that Century breached two reinsurance...more
The Eighth Circuit reversed a district court decision vacating an arbitration award relating to a federal crop insurance policy issued through a standard reinsurance agreement with the Federal Crop Insurance Corp. (FCIC). The...more
Recovering returns from reinsurance commissions can be a costly and time-consuming endeavor, at least when a former director of the agency that received the provisional commissions allegedly engages in a slew of activity to...more
A Puerto Rico district court dismissed a third-party action by defendant-policyholder Puma Energy Caribe LLC against the reinsurers of an insurance policy issued by plaintiff Integrand Assurance Co. Puma claimed that the...more
Everest Reinsurance Co. appealed from two district court orders. It claimed that this dispute with Pennsylvania National Mutual Casualty Insurance Co. was the same as a prior dispute that Penn National had arbitrated with two...more
A farmer who lost a crop insurance dispute at arbitration took his insurance company to federal district court, filing a motion to vacate the arbitration award. When the lower court split the baby, the farmer and the insurer...more
The Southern District of New York has concluded that an insurer’s threat to terminate a reinsurance agreement if the other insurer to the agreement did not comply with its obligations did not terminate the agreement or give...more
The Southern District of New York granted a ceding insurer’s motion to dismiss certain counterclaims by a defendant-reinsurer, finding their reinsurance agreement was never rescinded and that the cedent adequately performed....more
A reinsurance agreement and attachments filed in a court proceeding and purportedly containing “all manner of confidential and proprietary business information,” including “product design,” “service standards,” “pricing,” and...more
Since arbitration is a process of dispute resolution in accordance with a private agreement, the question of consolidation of arbitral proceedings ought to be determined in the same manner as other procedural issues. In...more
Plaintiff sells workers’ compensation insurance through its “EquityComp” program approved by New Jersey law. Defendant purchased an EquityComp policy....more
The District of Nebraska recently ruled in favor of Charter Oak Oil Co. (“Charter Oak”)’s attempt to dismiss a breach of contract case by Applied Underwriters Captive Risk Assurance Co. (“AUCRA”) based on the first-to-file...more
A federal district court in Pennsylvania recently dismissed all claims asserted by an insured against a reinsurer in a coverage dispute over an explosion at plaintiff Three Rivers Hydroponics (“Three Rivers”)’s commercial...more
The receiver for Gramercy Insurance Company sought to avoid arbitration of a reinsurance dispute with Contractor’s Bonding, Ltd., by arguing the FAA was reverse preempted under the McCarran-Ferguson Act....more
In a case involving a reinsurance participation agreement (RPA), a California trial court has examined the interplay between two seemingly irreconcilable contract provisions: one that provided for the arbitration of any...more