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.…
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On June 15, Matthiesen, Wickert & Lehrer, S.C. (MWL) announced the unveiling of its new website – a completely reworked, state-of-the-art, interactive, and encyclopedic subrogation tool which promises to make your subrogation responsibilities even easier and more effective. It has been two years in the making, and we are proud of the finished product –…
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Matthiesen, Wickert & Lehrer, S.C. (“MWL”) is pleased to welcome Ana Zabalgoitia, a new senior litigation associate, to the firm’s Austin branch office. Ana graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and graduated from St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio. She is licensed in Texas and New Mexico and has been…
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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…
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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…
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Matthiesen, Wickert & Lehrer, S.C. (“MWL”) is pleased to welcome Zeeshan Iqbal, a new litigation associate, to the firm’s Santa Ana, California branch office. Zeeshan (who also goes by “Z”), graduated with a finance degree from California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, California. He went on to attend and graduate law school at Baylor Law…
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Subrogation professionals might read the title to this article and wonder what subrogation and the confounding labyrinth of insurance coverage might have in common. After all, aren’t we all comfortably nestled in the subrogation world so that we don’t have to wade through endless pages of small font, state-specific endorsements, and baffling insurance policy lexicon?…
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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…
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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…
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Turner v. Pleasant Acres LLC, 2022 WL 815834 (Kan. App. 2022). On the same day as the Alabama Court of Appeals issued its ruling in O’Brien v. Mobile Public Library, attempting to curtail the rights of a workers’ compensation carrier against UM/UIM benefits, the Kansas Court of Appeals was doing exactly the opposite. For years,…
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