As stated before, insurance companies prefer to litigate cases in federal court, whereas, lawyers suing insurance companies prefer to litigate in state court. The laws are such that the insurance companies get their way most of the time. However, one of the ways to keep a case in state court…
Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). These cases are tough even under the best of circumstances. Lawyers who handle ERISA cases do not spend time advertising their great results. The reason is the ERISA law prohibits “great” results. A win is just getting what you should have received in the…
Most of the time, Personal Injury Protection (PIP) benefits are paid when a proper claim for them is made and then if a claim for Uninsured Motorist (UIM) benefits is made, the insurance company takes/gets an offset for the PIP benefits in any settlement that occurs. But what if the…
Claims for violations of the Texas Insurance Code must be stated properly against an insurance company adjuster. One way of doing this is talked about in this Western District of Texas, San Antonio Division, opinion styled, Jeanette Kotzur, David Kotzur v. Metropolitan Lloyds Insurance Company of Texas, Bryant Tullous, Michael…
As is acknowledged in the following case, the federal courts are mixed as to their rulings on the timing of when an insurance company adjuster is sued and how that affects diversity cases. This case is from the Western District of Texas, San Antonio Division. It is styled, Bexar Diversified…
Spring is coming soon and exclusions in homeowner policies for “surface and ground water damage” will be an issue an insurance lawyer must be able to discuss with client. Here is a November 2019, opinion from the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, that “kinda” addresses this issue. The opinion…
What is “bad faith” in the context of insurance? There is a lot of material on this subject. Here is a little to know about. In the 1997, Texas Supreme Court opinion styled, Universe Life Ins. Co. v. Giles, adopted the standard that an insurer breaches its duty of good…
As discussed before, litigating cases in Federal Court is what an insurance company prefers to do. Ans as discussed before, there are ways to keep this from happening in the right circumstances. The United States 5th Circuit issued an opinion issued an opinion in 1998, that is worth knowing about…
All insurance lawyers understand that there are time limits within which an insurance company must accept and pay the claim or else deny the claim. And it is also understood that the insured making the claim has an absolute duty to cooperate with the claims investigation. But what about a…
Understanding how insurance policies are interpreted by the courts is one of the more important aims of an insurance law attorney. Here is some more information to be kept in mind. An insurance policy is a contract, generally governed by the same rules of construction as all other contracts. This…