“‘Tonoga v. New Hampshire’ and the Applicability of Pollution Exclusions to PFAS”, was published in New York Law Journal on October 5, 2022. Partner Hilary Henkind and associate Ananda Zhu analyze the applicability of pollution...
Partner Jeffrey Weinstein and associate Samuel Weiss examine the viability in federal circuit courts of the time-sensitive snap removal — a motion to move from state to federal court, made after a plaintiff has filed a case but before they have properly...
This article was published on the PLUS (Professional Liability Underwriting Society) Blog on March 14, 2022. Partner Barry Temkin and Robert Usinger, Esq. co-authored “Choice of Counsel and Policy Erosion for Professional Liability Policies Under...
It is well-settled that the mysterious disappearance exclusion in an all-risk policy does not exclude from coverage the loss of property caused by theft[1]; rather, it precludes coverage for missing property where there is no physical evidence to show...
Partner Amy Kallal and Special Counsel Andrea Fort discuss recent cases involving the efforts to obtain access to arbitration awards which are filed as part of petitions to confirm or vacate. Some courts have allowed third-party access to awards just...
A domestic corporation is a citizen of its state of incorporation and principal place of business for purposes of diversity jurisdiction.[1] By contrast, the citizenship of other “unincorporated” domestic business entities (such as limited liability...
Does An Insurer Have An Entitlement to Recoup Defense Costs When No Duty to Indemnify Exists? In a case of first impression for the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Second Department, the court chose not to follow prior decisions of its...
The Case Of Cadre v. Proassurance Casualty Company Rule 1:21-1B of the New Jersey Rules of Court governs the practice of law as a limited liability company, and provides in relevant part that “[a]ttorneys may engage in the practice of law as limited...
The New York Law Journal published “NY Prompt Pay Act for Construction Contractors,” written by partner Barry Temkin and coauthor Ken Eccleston, on August 10, 2021. This article provides an in-depth discussion of New York’s Prompt Pay Act,...
William Wilson published new book, NJ Insurance Coverage Litigation – A Practitioners Guide (2021), 3rd ed. With co-author Frank DeAngelis, they provide a broad overview of insurance coverage litigation in NJ involving the enforcement and...
The Indiana Supreme Court Weighs In With the proliferation of computer crime these days, cyber insurance has become a must for businesses. There are many different types of cyber coverage available on the market, and the coverage that an insured...
Maintaining Confidentiality When Petitioning for Relief in Court A long-running dispute between Pennsylvania National Mutual Casualty Insurance Company and one of its reinsurers, Everest Reinsurance Company, recently culminated in the unsealing of an...
This article was published on Law360.com (subscription required) on June 10, 2021, in Insurance Authority, and in the daily Insurance newsletter. It was written by Partner Amy Justine Kallal, Special Counsel Andrea Fort, and associate Andrew Romano. On...
State and federal courts across the country are grappling with insurance coverage litigation, as insureds who suffered business losses due to government-mandated shutdowns look to their property insurers for relief. These cases present the following key...
Barry Temkin co-authored “ABA Remote Work Guide Raises Bar For Atty Tech Know-How” in Law360 (subscription required) with Jennifer Goldsmith, vice president of professional liability claims at Ironshore, discussing ABA Ethics Opinion 498, a...
This article was published on Liberty Mutual’s website. You can access it here. This article will consider potential future claims against design professionals that are expected to arise from the Covid-19 pandemic and offer recommendations for how...
This article was published in the New York Law Journal on January 15, 2021. In addition to a 2018 ABA ethics opinion which outlines when law firms are ethically obligated to notify clients of data breaches jeopardizing the security of their confidential...
Much has been written in recent years about lawyers’ duties to preserve the confidentiality of client information under the rules of professional conduct and to take reasonable precautions to strengthen cybersecurity in order to avoid data breaches. ...
This article was originally published in the New York Law Journal on July 20, 2020. Expert Opinion The SEC and U.S. Justice Department are investigating suspicious stock trades made by U.S. Senator Richard Burr in February 2020, which might have been...
On June 30, 2020 registered securities broker-dealers must begin their compliance with new SEC Regulation Best Interest and Form CRS Relationship Summary/Form ADV Part 3, which were announced by the Securities and Exchange Commission on June 5, 2019.[1]...
Partner Matthew Lasky’s article, “Data Protection: Harmonizing Tensions Between the NAIC’s ‘Insurance Data Security Law’ & Traditional Access-To-Records Provisions” was published in the Journal of Reinsurance 2020,...
Partner Barry Temkin’s article about the SEC’s new regulation governing broker-dealers, Regulation Best Interest (Reg. BI), “New ‘Regulation Best Interest’ Becomes Effective for Broker Dealers,” was published in the New York Law...
Cyber Attacks: What Are They? Broadly speaking, cyber attacks are socially or politically motivated attacks carried out through the Internet, targeting individuals, corporations, governments, or the general population.[1] They can be categorized into...
Suppose a pipe bursts in a hotel, causing water damage to an entire floor, and requiring the replacement of that floor’s carpeting. As it turns out, however, that style and pattern of carpeting is no longer available anywhere. The hotel insists that...
If only Clair Huxtable, Esq. were willing to take on Cliff Huxtable’s cases pro bono, maybe William “Bill” Cosby could have avoided the extended legal battle with American International Group, Inc. (“AIG”) over whether it was obligated to defend Mr....
Cybersecurity events, including hacking, are on the rise at law firms. A major professional liability insurer estimates that as many as 80% of the largest law firms in the U.S. have experienced data breaches recently.[1] Nor is external hacking the only...
The article, co-authored with Brenda Dorsett, is about ethical concerns for lawyers who use Amazon Echo and other voice-activated digital assistants. It was published on Friday, May 24, 2019, as an Expert Analysis. Click here to download and read. Click...
Is my Amazon Alexa spying on me? Recent years have witnessed the growth and proliferation of voice-activated virtual assistants like the Amazon Echo, with its digital assistant Alexa, Google Home, and Apple Home Pod, which have picked up where Apple’s...
Let’s say an instant oatmeal product incorporates a dried milk ingredient that has been manufactured in a facility with unsanitary conditions and that the milk ingredient may be contaminated with Salmonella as a result. The instant oatmeal product then...
The article, “America Has An Opioid Problem: Who’s Going To Pay To Fix It?,” is available in the AIRROC Matters 2019 Spring Issue and The Society of Actuaries. Read the article here.
Partner Lloyd Gura and special counsel Andrea Fort’s article, “Automatization of Underwriting and the Future of the Reinsurance Relationship,” was published in the March 2019 Journal of Reinsurance. New technology and artificial...
Product Contamination: When The Spices Kick It Up a Notch, Who Will Respond? A notification rings and the insured sees an urgent email from its spice supplier. The email states, in bold capital letters: ”RECALL! Spices Contaminated With Salmonella.” ...
Technology keeps progressing in leaps and bounds. We read that robots or the much- awaited (or dreaded) artificial intelligence are going to take over property claims work in the All Things Internet New World. Unfortunately, there is a “dark side” that...
A. Introduction From causes of action sounding in breach of contract, to improperly earned commissions, to allegations of violations of real estate specific statutes, buyers and sellers have continued to assert claims against real estate professionals,...
Court decisions concerning flood zones designated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (“FEMA”) often seem to be like someone is reciting the alphabet. “A,” “AE,” “B,” “C,” “D,” “V,” “X,” to name a few. (What happened to E through U are...
Medidata Solutions, Inc. provides cloud-based services to scientists conducting research in clinical trials and uses Google’s Gmail as a platform for the company’s emails. While the emails are routed through Google’s computer servers, which also process...
The Supreme Court of Ohio recently issued a decision that bucked the dominant trend among U.S. courts when it comes to CGL coverage for construction defects. In Ohio Northern University v. Charles Construction Services, Inc. — N.E.3d —-,...
In Gen. Re Life Corp. v. Lincoln Nat’l Life Ins. Co., No. 17-2496-CV, 2018 WL 6186078, — F.3d. — (2d Cir. Nov. 28, 2018), the Second Circuit, for the first time, recognized “an exception to functus offico where an arbitration award is...
According to Business Insider, thirty states currently allow the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, and nine permit the recreational use of marijuana.[2] Seven years ago, medical marijuana was allowed in seventeen states and the District of...
On June 11, 2018, news broke that the local and federal law enforcement officials had arrested 74 people, including nearly 30 in Nigeria, in a “coordinated crackdown on people who convince correspondents to wire them money for fraudulent activities.”...
Reprinted with permission from the New York Law Journal, Volume 259 – NO. 124 on Thursday, June 28, 2018. To view the article, click here.
Introduction “When will it end?” is a refrain that must be on many liability insurers’ minds when it comes to liability under commercial general liability policies issued decades ago. Many such policies contain anti-assignment clauses, the purpose of...
In a recent case, the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey held that an insured had no duty to defend an insured accused of falsely advertising the origin of its product. Albion Engineering Company, a New Jersey company, was sued...
Liability insurance policies do not provide coverage for injuries resulting from conduct that is “particularly reprehensible.” As a general rule, coverage is barred where the insured had an intent to injure. In most circumstances, courts apply a...
This article series was published by Law360, from June 2016 to February 2018. You can access the full series (Parts 1-14) here (subscription required) or read a PDF of the full series here.
In an unusual and noteworthy publicly-reported discovery battle between a cedant and reinsurer, the cedant sought to protect almost twenty years of historical reserving information relating to late notice of asbestos claims against its insured, on...
The state of the law across the U.S. regarding insurance for construction defects under commercial general liability (CGL) coverage is an ever-changing landscape. Although numerous coverage issues continue to be debated, including the fundamental issue...
Property insurance policies, like other insurance policies, contain an overall limit of liability, which is the maximum amount that the insurance company will pay for any given loss. In addition to an overall limit, policies may also contain...
The opioid crisis has focused attention on workplace substance abuse like never before. In August, President Trump declared the opioid crises “a national emergency,” the likes of which “this country has never seen before.” State and federal political...
Insurance policies commonly contain an exclusion for losses caused by “earth movement” or “subsidence.” Such exclusions typically exclude coverage for losses caused by earthquakes, landslides, mudflows, and earth sinking or shifting. Absent language...
Insurance issues often influence the outcome of securities arbitrations and mediations, yet the workings of errors and omissions insurance is not fully understood by many lawyers, arbitrators and mediators. In fact, insurance information is generally...
It is an unfortunate fact of life for insurers and insurance coverage defense attorneys that courts often lean the insured’s way in matters of policy interpretation. This axiom also carries through in many jurisdictions when insurers accuse the insured...
This article is reprinted with permission from Law360, New York, June 22, 2017.
If you could count on anything, it would be that our partner, Dan Markewich, would spend at least a few minutes at each monthly partner meeting talking about the Mound Cotton Newsletter. The Newsletter was something he took pride in, often reminding...
Lawyers who maintain active social media presences should be aware of two recent opinions by ethics committees in New York discussing the extent to which lawyers’ postings on the social media page LinkedIn constitute attorney advertising in New York. ...
As more businesses come to realize that cyber attacks pose a serious threat to business operations, revenue streams and contingency planning, the market is starting to expand and develop new products to address business interruption (“BI”) resulting...
This article address whether, under New York law, a commercial general liability (“CGL”) insurer would be liable for its insured’s breach of contract if the insured botches a building renovation resulting in foul odors permeating the building so much so...
This article is reprinted with permission from the New York Law Journal, Volume 257—NO. 39, Wednesday, March 1, 2017.
This article is reprinted with permission from Law360, January 26, 2017.
This article is reprinted with permission from Law360, New York, January 23, 2017, Law360.com.
This article is reprinted with permission from the January 10, 2017 issue of New York Law Journal © 2017 ALM Media Properties, LLC. Further duplication without permission is prohibited. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission from Corporate Disputes Magazine, Jan-Mar 2017 Issue.
Lawyers who represent insurance companies, banks, insurance agents and other financial institutions in New York should be aware of new Department of Financial Services cybersecurity regulations that become effective January 1, 2017. The new DFS...
This article is reprinted with permission from the December 2016 Plus Journal, Volume XXIX, Number 12.
MCWG partners Costantino Suriano and Deanna Manzo authored a White Paper on Fort McMurray Wildfires: “WHO IS THE CBI WINNER? An Oil-Producing City Evacuated Must Mean a CBI Claim is Coming to Some Insurer.” The paper was published in the...
This article accompanied a presentation Partner Jonathan Gross gave at the Defense Research Institute’s “Insurance Coverage and Claims Institute Seminar” on April 7, 2016 in Chicago. To read the full article, please click below.
Jeffrey Weinstein and Jared Markowitz co-authored “REBUTTAL: When Insurance Policies Are Enforced As Written,” published by Law360 on January 26, 2016. This article is reprinted with permission.
