On Friday, August 19, a huge fire ripped through the historic and family-owned Mattapoisett Boatyard in southern Massachusetts, a short distance south of MWL’s Boston office. The fire destroyed five buildings, three dozen cars, and countless expensive boats. Continuous explosions and fuel from the boats left the property a complete loss, making subrogation efforts difficult…
New Law Mandates That Insurance Companies Report All Dog Bite Claims To The State. It’s a great trivia question. Which state has the most dog bite claims? The answer probably won’t surprise you—California, with 2,103 insurance claims in 2020, followed by Florida, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois. What may surprise you, however, is…
New York Botanical Garden v. Allied World Assurance Co. (U.S.) Inc., 16127, 2022 WL 2124845 (N.Y. App. Div. 1st Dept. June 14, 2022). Cajun Conti, LLC v. Certain Underwriters at Lloyd’s, London, 2021-CA-0343, 2022 WL 2154863 (La. App. 4th Cir. June 15, 2022). There is a hole in the dam. Prior to June 14, every one…
Pulitzer prize winning historian David McCullough once said that “Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it is so hard.” When claims adjusters, subrogation professionals, and/or subrogation lawyers document a settlement or stipulation with an insured’s or employee’s attorney regarding a subrogation interest, getting all the right words in the…
A new analysis of pedestrian safety by the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) reveals that pedestrian fatalities are sharply on the rise. In fact, the report reveals the astonishing news that an average of nearly twenty-two (22) pedestrians per day were struck and killed by automobiles in the U.S. in 2020 and that number is…
Each year, water damage and freezing pipes cost insurers $15-$20 billion and result in claims from approximately 1 in 50 insured homes. While many cases of water damage are caused by a lack of maintenance or normal wear and tear, in the winter months, claims related to water damage and freezing pipes are extremely common.…
Most subrogation claims are small. If your subrogation law firm or recovery vendor does not handle small claims, you shouldn’t use them. Using HO-3 homeowner’s policy claims as an example, the average property damage claim payment was $8,787 according to data from the Insurance Research Council. In 2020, the average private passenger auto collision claim…
HB 2064 Takes Effect June 9, 2022. For many years a landlord’s property insurer’s ability to subrogate for property damage against a negligent tenant was governed by a handful of case decisions. A landlord was frequently presumed to carry insurance for the tenant’s benefit, making the tenant an implied co-insured and, therefore, immune from a…
Stowers v. Georgia Pacific, LLC, 2022 WL 903486 (Va. App. 2022). Trial lawyers in Virginia have been trying for decades to convince that state’s courts to rule that a workers’ compensation carrier is not subrogated to non-economic damages awarded or recovered in a third-party tort action. On March 29, 2022, the latest such effort was…
MWL sees more than its fair share of subrogation cases involving work-related injuries caused by shifting and falling cargo. If a truck’s cargo is not properly loaded or secured, the resulting workers’ compensation claims can be significant. We routinely see cases in which shifting cargo results in a trailer tipping over and a resulting tip…