Welcome to our blog! We want it to be a forum for the analysis and open discussion of reinsurance law and practice and commercial and industry arbitration. We will be covering recent developments in or affecting both of these subjects, as well as exploring topics pertinent to each.
Both subjects cover a pretty broad spectrum, and there is an overlap between the two. Arbitration law is an integral part of reinsurance dispute resolution and people who handle or deal with arbitrations involving other subject matters have no doubt come across arbitration law decisions involving reinsurance disputes. By the same token, reinsurance practitioners regularly draw on arbitration law precedents where the underlying dispute arises, for example, in the securities, maritime, construction, or telecommunication industry (or some other industry).
We undertook the task of blogging about reinsurance and arbitration law with both enthusiasm and a mild dose of trepidation. We are enthusiastic because both subjects are truly fascinating from an analytical perspective. Both involve many different aspects of contract law, conflicts of law, and the interplay between our state and federal court systems. Both sometimes require an understanding of international law. In addition, both require the practitioner not only to understand what the law is, but how an arbitration panel might plausibly interpret it, and the extent to which a plausible interpretation grounded in custom, practice or industry norms can be an acceptable substitute for what the law actually is, may be or should be. There is much here for the creative, inquiring mind, and ample fodder for debate.
Our mild trepidation is that which we assume most experience when they undertake to write or create something that they hope will be useful and taken at least semi-seriously. This blog is our first foray into Web-2.0. But we know that keeping readers interested requires frequent posting, and we know that our posts will have to be interesting enough to be worthy of our readers’ attention. That means we have undertaken what may be a daunting task, but we are dedicated to it, and usually that’s half the battle. Whether or not we ultimately accomplish what we have set out to do will depend on whether a reasonable number of our readers conclude that they gleaned something meaningful from our posts.
Whatever your particular interest in arbitration or reinsurance law may be, we hope you find our posts interesting, informative, and relevant to whatever it is you do. We also hope that you’ll post comments to express your views, even if you disagree with what we have to say. We’ll certainly respond as promptly as we reasonably can to your comments, subject, of course, to the usual rules of etiquette. And if you are involved in or aware of any pertinent case or other development that you believe is worthy of discussion, please e mail us at PJL1@LoreeLawFirm.com.
Our first substantive post will briefly address the difference between the terms “commercial arbitration” and “industry arbitration,” as we use them here. Just as there is an overlap between reinsurance and arbitration law, so too, is there an overlap between commercial and industry arbitration. But, as we shall see, industry arbitration is not simply a species of commercial arbitration, and not all commercial arbitration is industry arbitration.
Time to get to work….
