Commentary and analysis on the
law of insurance coverage

Can You Assign Your Insurance Policy to Someone Else? No, but…

Assignment  The law is riddled with jargon.  Unfamiliar phrases and concepts, inexplicable to non-lawyers, serve to exclude the uninitiated and to further the legal profession’s interest in making lawyers indispensable to lay people.  One of the more peculiar legal jargon phrases is “chose in action.”  These ordinary English words, when arranged in this way, make no sense except to lawyers and judges.  This obscure legal concept was a key to an important recent decision by the New Jersey Supreme Court concerning whether policyholders can legally assign their insurance rights to others. Read More

When An Insurer’s Reservation of Rights Actually Reserves Nothing

torn paper over are you covered  As often as not, when a liability insurance company agrees to assume a policyholder’s defense against claims in a lawsuit, the carrier will issue a “reservation of rights” letter that says to the insured, in effect: “While we are protecting you for the time being, we might later decide that there’s no coverage under your policy for this lawsuit.  And if we do reach such a conclusion: Sayonara.”  Recently, the South Carolina Supreme Court held that, if carriers do not write those reservation of rights letters carefully and unambiguously, any later denial of coverage might be ineffective. Read More

Subscribe

If you’d like us to notify you whenever there is a new post on The Insurance Recovery Journal, subscribing will make that happen. There’s no charge and we won’t use your email address for any purpose other than to send the notifications.