It has now been four years since Claims Journal’s online magazine asked Gary Wickert to begin a new monthly column focusing on subrogation and related claims and insurance topics. Gary’s column entitled “The Road To Recovery” can be found HERE. The column was very well-received and continues to provide the claims industry with a very widely-read medium in which to talk shop and discuss the importance of actually recovering dollars as opposed to spending them.
The industry reception the column received was better than we could have been hoped for. On December 30, 2013, Claims Journal ran their traditional year-end assessment of the best and most popular legal articles that were published by Claims Journal in 2013. The article was entitled “Claims Journal’s Top 10 Legal Articles of 2013” and can be viewed HERE. What was surprising and quite gratifying for subrogation enthusiasts, however, was that the MWL column was mentioned not only once, twice, or even three times in the top ten list – Gary’s articles landed in four of the top five spots for 2013.
A year later, on December 31, 2014, Claims Journal once again ran their traditional year-end assessment of the best and most popular articles that were published by Claims Journal in 2014. The article entitled “Claims Journal’s Top 10 Legal Articles of 2014” can be viewed HERE. We were delighted to see that six of the top ten articles were all written by Gary Wickert for the MWL column, including the number one article and three of the top four articles.
In 2015, lightning struck again. In its year-end piece entitled “Claims Journal’s Top 10 Articles of 2015”, Gary’s articles claimed five of the top ten articles, including the number one article which he co-authored with his son, Lee Wickert, a research law clerk and soon-to-be graduate of Marquette Law School.
Well, this is becoming something of a habit. On December 29, 2016, Claims Journal came out with their annual top ten, and guess what? Gary claimed six of the top ten articles. In its 2016 version of “Claims Journal’s Top 10 Articles of 2016”, which can be viewed HERE, some of the top read articles were “If a Tree Falls In the Forest, Does the Subrogation Department Hear It?” and “Damage to Property Without Market Value.”
Claims Journal’s online magazine remains a staple of information and resources for the claims professional, as does MWL’s website and its large collection of subrogation and insurance litigation-related resources, articles, and 50-state charts.
While we’d like to lay credit for this amazing accomplishment at the feet of exquisite scrivener skills and writing ability, the real credit should be attributed to the fact that our industry still craves useful and practical information on subrogation issues that are all too often ignored or glossed over in the claims world. We give the success of these articles to a claims topic which may be considered “dry” from time to time, but consistently remains the only area of the insurance industry, outside of underwriting and insurance investment portfolios, that returns money to the insurer, rather than paying it out, and who doesn’t find that interesting?
