Since this is an insurance coverage column, it’s perhaps fitting to initiate the new year with a look back at the biggest coverage issue of the past year and probably the past couple of decades. In 2001, the coverage question …
Anyone who has read my “When Words Collide” book or my blog or attended any of my seminars and webinars knows that I am the country’s foremost advocate of the “RTFP! Doctrine.” Answering coverage questions begins with reading the policy. …
I’m not sure when I first wrote about this month’s coverage issue, though I’m sure it was at least 13 years ago and probably earlier. This is the time of year when auto collisions with deer begin to peak in …
In 2018, the Insurance Journal published an article titled “Lawnmower Injuries Remain Source of Serious Injury and High Costs.” A study cited in the article stated each day during the mowing season, about 30 people are injured or maimed in …
This “Is It Covered?” column will examine two real-life claims from the Dakotas involving frozen pipes – one personal lines and the other commercial lines. Both are good examples of how policy language usually governs, even if the result defies …
One claim dispute I was involved with I refer to in seminars as “The Unimpeachable Case of What ‘Are’ Is.” It illustrates how a single word, even the tense of a verb, in a policy form can make all the …
I love quotations. I’ve collected them for almost 50 years. Over 20 years ago, I published my first book which was a collection of 1,500 of my favorite quotations, all indexed and cross-referenced, with an introduction that explained how they …
So far in this column, I’ve written several articles that are titled, or could have been titled, “Just Because It’s Not Covered Doesn’t Mean It’s Not Covered.” Sometimes a policy almost certainly was never intended to cover a particular type …
This morning, I wrote an article for the CPCU CLEW (Coverage, Litigators, Educators & Witnesses) Interest Group called “On Becoming an Insurance Coverage Nerd.” This afternoon, in this column, I get to demonstrate one of the values of being a …
Last month, I shared a claim I had consulted on involving mobile equipment. The adjuster had incorrectly denied the claim because he failed to read both the definition of “mobile equipment” and the exclusion that referenced the definition. When determining …
