For nearly fifty years, Montana has been ground zero for the aggressive application of the Made Whole Doctrine. Intimidation, bad-faith actions, and class action lawsuits have littered the ground where common-sense insurance subrogation used to dwell. What began as an equitable principle established by the Montana Supreme Court in 1977 in Skauge v. Mountain States…
A while back, I was involved in a case where some electricians had installed solar panels on the roof of a building to generate electricity. A few years after it was installed, there was a fire. Nobody really disputed how it happened; some rodent, most likely a squirrel, had been gnawing on electrical wires underneath…
Most states permit a workers’ compensation carrier to assert a future credit against benefits otherwise payable when an injured employee recovers damages from a responsible third party. The availability of a future credit is now the rule rather than the exception. Yet, while the existence of the credit is widely accepted, the mechanics of how…
The Utah Supreme Court has issued an important decision for workers’ compensation and subrogation professionals navigating third-party recoveries and future credits. In HB Construction and/or Auto Owners Insurance Co. v. Labor Commission of Utah, the Court resolved a long-standing ambiguity in Utah Code § 34A-2-106(5) and clarified how attorney fees must be allocated when a…