Gary Wickert recently appeared on a national Ringler Radio program, hosted by Larry Cohen. The program, titled “Driverless Car Litigation”, focused on the ever-changing intersection between the exploding industry of self-driving vehicles and litigation. The latest innovations in driverless cars were discussed, along with their likely impact on the insurance industry and underwriting. Even trial…
Words matter. On May 22, 2017, the Ohio Court of Appeals paid attention to the specific wording in the Workers’ Compensation Act and ignored the traditional definition given to the term “third party” in workers’ compensation subrogation settings. In McKinney v. Omni Die Casting, Inc., 2017 Ohio – 2949 (Ohio App. 2017), it held for…
In a highly anticipated decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has finally weighed in on the issue of FEHBA subrogation and federal preemption of state laws in Coventry Health Care of Missouri, Inc. v. Nevils, 137 S.Ct. 1190 (April 18, 2017) (Coventry II). The verdict is that state law must yield to FEHBA contracts’ subrogation provisions.…
Words matter. Our firm reviews as many as two to three dozen new claim files/catastrophic injury cases every day. We review these files for many reasons, but primarily to determine if the loss/injury was the result of negligence on the part of some “third party” other than the insured. This “third party” is also known…
In Nevada, when a workers’ compensation carrier is subrogated to the rights of the worker under § 616C.215, the carrier has a lien on the “total proceeds” of any third-party recovery. N.R.S. § 616C.215(5). This is true whether the recovery is by way of judgment, settlement or otherwise. Id. The statute is very clear on this…
Effective auto property subrogation may seem simple, but it often requires a thorough understanding of some of the more confusing legal terms known to American civil jurisprudence. When the owner of a vehicle entrusts his or her vehicle to a permissive user who is then involved in an accident which results in damages to the…
A long-standing controversy has been resolved and a major anti-subrogation obstacle in Pennsylvania has been overcome. The proverbial light bulb has gone on in the Quaker State. The ongoing debate in Pennsylvania over whether a workers’ compensation carrier can initiate the filing of a third-party lawsuit is finally over. The answer is “yes” and we…
Serrano v. Workers’ Comp. Appeal Bd. (Ametek, Inc.), 2017 WL 563317 (Pa. Comm. 2017). On March 6, 2006, a container of metal powders, with which Serrano was working, exploded, severely burning him. Serrano sued Aramark Uniform and Career Apparel, Inc. (Aramark), which had provided the flame-resistant coveralls Serrano had been wearing at the time of…
The use of expert witnesses has become an integral and indispensable aspect of American litigation, and it is often the side with the best expert who wins the day. The same holds true for subrogation files in which the subrogated carrier must invest in an expert to assist in meeting the plaintiff’s burden of proof.…
If a contest were held for the worst appellate decision of 2017, we might already have a winner. The recent unpublished Hawai’i Court of Appeals decision in Hawaiian Dredging Constr. Co., Inc. v. Fujikawa Assocs., Inc., 2017 WL 663540 (Haw. App. 2017) turns the very concept of workers’ compensation in the Aloha State upside down,…