Posted On: February 16, 2005, 2:01 pm CST

Posted By: Tom Laquercia

Kudos to Rev D!
I am truly pleased that Brother Barney made some money from my comments and is now a little richer. But like everyone in the insurance industry, for starters, Barney and his company is just one of the many whose bottom line is enhanced by good defense lawyering.
Talk about Barbarians at the Gates!
What would insurers do to defend and thereby reduce their exposures if not by lawyers? Many more lawyers are employees of insurers whose insureds they represent.
No, there are some people that do it for love and some that do it for money (if you get my drift, but all the latter work directly or indirectly for the insurance industry. Insurance is the integumentary system that keeps the body of society together and gives it form. Nothing worth anything that is done from the arts to making zeppelins to fly is done without consulting an insurance agent or broker and placing coverage. Conversely, when one can't muster enough insurance, it's common that a project is scrapped and enters Nirvana. But if there is a dispute about coverage or liability or damages, the people you turn to are just like anyone else knowledgeable in the industry: they are the attorneys who stand in your place and stead in the trenches and take everything thrown at them from judges, juries and appellate benches who want more for the plaintiffs. These attorneys are there hoping to come away with something better than what they went into when handed a file.
Check out the Sanango/Balbuena cases in NY which were recently reported in The Insurance Journal which ran an article of what we did in our firm to limit future wage claims by undocumented aliens. We convinced an appellate court to apply IRCA, the Federal immigration law. Never done before for a state tort action and two trial judges were reversed in order to get that result so unappealing was the theory we espoused.
The entire insurance industry thereby will benefit by it both in settlements and judgments each time an undocumented alien claimant makes a claim for future lost wages in NY. I also predict this will follow throughout the U.S. if other states follow this precedent.
Oh, yeah, we did get paid(hourly)for our work as did the salaried employees who hired us(and thanked us).