Imagine beginning your day with a cup of coffee in the car on the way to work, watching the morning news from a holographic projection on the windshield while making notes in preparation for a 9:00 a.m. meeting. All this while your car follows a preset route, automatically changes lanes to avoid slower vehicles, after…
According to Arbitration Forums, Inc.’s website, the 5,200 members who subscribe to Arbitration Forums file over 949,000 disputes and nearly 1.7 million subrogation demands worth more than $13.9 billion in claims annually. Most of the insurance companies in the U.S. are members of Arbitration Forums under one or more of the programs offered by Arbitration…
The Washington Court of Appeals decision in Kosovan v. Omni Insurance Company, 2021 WL 4530640 (Wash. App. 2021), holds that a bad faith claim and a claim for violation of the Consumer Protection Act are both warranted when the PIP carrier attempts to subrogate its PIP payment before the insured is made whole. This case…
Ranking natural disasters tends to be somewhat arbitrary. Whether or not a storm which kills three people is worse than one which causes $1 billion in damages is perhaps something that should be left to philosophers and theologians. Ranking the “deadliest” natural disasters would undoubtedly result in a slightly different list. However, in the context…
The claims history of most domestic insurance carriers is littered with billion dollar claims as a result of catastrophic losses caused by natural disasters. When God sends a hurricane, tornado, flood, or naturally occurring fire, the resulting losses can be enough to put many insurance companies into receivership. With no third parties or obvious subrogation…
Matthiesen, Wickert & Lehrer (MWL) takes pride in our efforts to constantly innovate and use creative legal theories to facilitate recoveries for our clients. Our firm has been actively involved in the pursuit of investigation and litigation of claims against oil/gas fracking companies related to their causing earthquake related damages which have historically gone unrecognized…
Wildfires are a natural part of California’s landscape, but they have become larger and more damaging recently. A recent study by the University of Washington and UC-Santa Barbara looked at the long-term future of wildfires and reveals that a buildup of fuels in conjunction with severe drought conditions suggest that we should brace ourselves for…
Successful subrogation against power companies is not a given. In determining whether the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) may be sued for its clear negligence in failing to properly winterize power production facilities and the power grid that it runs in Texas, the issue is currently in limbo. The Texas Supreme Court is currently…
A favorite quote of mine from the 2001 Jerry Zucker movie “Rat Race” goes like this: “Good things take time; but great things happen all at once.” Most of the time, laws change at a glacial pace. Where there is a provision of law that most people believe should be changed, it usually takes years…
Moreci v. Scaffold Solutions, Inc., 2021 WL 4397397 (Calif. App. 2021). A valiant effort by a California workers’ compensation carrier to make it more difficult for an employee to argue employer fault and settle around a workers’ compensation carrier’s statutory lien and right of reimbursement fell on deaf ears recently, when the California Court of…