Little by little, Alabama is letting out the line when it comes to who can recovery loss of use damages after an automobile has been in an accident. In addition to the other damages recoverable, loss of use (reasonable value of use or rental of a car while the owner is deprived of use of…
Every day we see evidence of the continuing evolution of subrogation law across our country. In many respects, we are still pioneers in this industry, as subrogation wasn’t pursued, respected, or sought after for many years, leaving many areas in our industry undecided by the courts and simply unknown. A good example of this is…
On July 25, 2020, a man named Wesley Little showed up at the front door of Vicki Baker, who was a long time resident of McKinney, Texas. Little had a 15 year-old girl with him when he knocked on the door. Only Vicki’s daughter, Deanna Cook, was home at the time. She recognized Little because…
On September 19, 2024, in one of the most pro-subrogation decisions in a generation, the Nevada Supreme Court has overnight turned Nevada into one of the most favorable states for workers’ compensation subrogation. With the stroke of a pen, the court has done the following: Abandoned the “Breen Formula”—which it declared was “unworkable” and “no…
It is said that good judgment comes from experience, but experience comes from bad judgment. This pithy aphorism is generally true in life but is particularly true when a company sees significantly increased workers’ compensation insurance premiums following a serious workers’ compensation claim. The same is true even if the claim was not the employer’s…
California is facing particularly severe wildfires this fall, with multiple fires raging across the state. These fires have led to widespread damage, including property loss, environmental destruction, and health hazards. On September 8, the Bridge Fire began in the Angeles National Forest. It exploded in size to over 50,000 acres, the cause of which is…
The author, Franz Kafka, known for his dark situations which many people relate to, once wrote a very short story about omnipotent power floating just beyond our reach. You go to the city to see the law. Upon arrival outside the law building, there is a guard who says “You may not pass without permission.”…
A Texas House Committee confirmed last week that a rotting and decayed utility pole that broke, causing power wires to fall on dry grass in the Texas Panhandle on February 26, sparked the Smokehouse Creek Fire, the largest and costliest wildfire in Texas history, and the largest U.S. wildfire in 2024. This confirms our initial…
In December we reported on the anti-subrogation climate in Missouri and the Court of Appeals decision in Thomas v. Ramushi, which held that, absent a “direct assignment”, an insurer has no authority to seek a property subrogation payment from the tortfeasor without the insured’s consent.[1] That decision highlighted the important distinction between a subrogation clause…
In a rare example of how strong a workers’ compensation statutory lien can be, a Pennsylvania appellate court affirmed a ruling by a Workers’ Compensation Judge (affirmed by the Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board (WCAB)) in which a workers’ compensation carrier was allowed to recover its full $45,530.48 lien out of the employee’s $675,000 third-party settlement,…