main image

Archive for August, 2009

Kathy Billingham, Peter Scarpato and Andy Walsh are Founding Members and Officers of REMEDI, the Re/Insurance Mediation Institute

August 27th, 2009 Mediation, Reinsurance Mediation 1 Comment »

Kathy Billingham, Peter Scarpato and Andy Walsh have, along with others, formed REMEDI, the Re/Insurance Mediation Institute, to promote and foster mediation in reinsurance and insurance disputes.  Kathy is the Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Peter is the Vice-Chair and President, and Andy is the Secretary and Treasurer. The Directors are Larry Monin, Jonathan Rosen, David Thirkill and Elizabeth Thompson, and other founding members are Paul Dassenko, Richard Waterman, Jim Stinson of Sidley Austin LLP, and Vince Vitkowsky and Jim Shanman of Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge LLP, which serves as pro bono outside general counsel.

Congratulations and good luck!

LinkedIn’s Commercial and Industry Arbitration and Mediation Group Is Now 251 Members Strong!

August 26th, 2009 Commercial and Industry Arbitration and Mediation Group, Mediation Comments Off on LinkedIn’s Commercial and Industry Arbitration and Mediation Group Is Now 251 Members Strong!

On May 21, 2009 Disputing and the Loree Reinsurance and Arbitration Law Forum announced the formation of the LinkedIn Commercial and Industry Arbitration and Mediation Group (post available here), an open forum for the discussion of industry and commercial ADR.   At that time the group was 29 members strong, and we are pleased to report that the group has since grown to 251  members.  Discussions have been lively, the group is internationally and professionally diverse, and group members have access to several ADR blogs, as well as articles posted by other group members.  It is an excellent networking and learning opportunity for anyone interested in commercial and industry ADR.

Membership in the group is recommended to those interested in keeping abreast of current events pertinent to arbitration (including consumer arbitration), tracking judicial and legislative developments relevant to arbitration law, learning more about the subject, or simply sharing information.  We are proud to have as members a number of commercial and industry arbitrators, attorneys, industry people and arbitration professionals.   

Membership is also recommended if you are a mediator, a business person who utilizes mediation to resolve disputes, an attorney who represent clients in mediation or a person interested in learning about mediation or sharing information on the subject.  The group is proud to have as members a number of accomplished mediators, including some well-known ADR bloggers.  Not being a mediator myself, I have learned much about mediation simply through group participation.    

We welcome new members.  The group is not a forum for, and does not permit, advertising or blatant self-promotion, so our members need not be concerned about being subject to sales pitches, and the like. 

If you are already a member of LinkedIn, please click here to apply for membership in the Group. If you are not a LinkedIn member, click here, and you will be guided through the process of creating a profile (which does not need to be completed in one step).  Once your profile is started, and you have a log-in name and password, you can apply for membership in the Group (which entails no more than clicking on a button).  Joining LinkedIn is free, as is joining the group.

We hope you’ll join us and participate!

Disputing Celebrates its Fourth Birthday!

August 24th, 2009 Commercial and Industry Arbitration and Mediation Group, General Comments Off on Disputing Celebrates its Fourth Birthday!

Today our good friends Karl Bayer and Victoria VanBuren are celebrating Disputing’s fourth birthday.  You can read about it here.   

Disputing is an excellent ADR blog and, on behalf of the Loree Reinsurance and Arbitration Law Forum, we congratulate Karl and Victoria on this special day.  Both of them have made an enormously valuable contribution to the ADR blogosphere, and continue to produce a steady stream of timely, interesting, thoughtful, and well-written posts. And they have a very impressive following, as well.

As co-founders of the LinkedIn Commercial and Industry Arbitration and Mediation Group, they have helped provide an excellent forum to the ADR community for the discussion of issues pertinent to the field.  The group continues to grow, and the discussions keep flowing, even in the dog days of summer!

Karl and Victoria:  Congratulations and keep up the excellent work!

House of Lords Hands Down Landmark Reinsurance Decision: Lexington Insurance Co. v. AGF Insurance Ltd.

August 22nd, 2009 Asbestos-Related Claims, Environmental Contamination Claims, Follow-the-Settlements/Follow-the Fortunes, House of Lords, Reinsurance Allocation, Reinsurance Claims Comments Off on House of Lords Hands Down Landmark Reinsurance Decision: Lexington Insurance Co. v. AGF Insurance Ltd.

Part II of a Two-Part Post

Introduction

In Part I we discussed the controversy surrounding the House of Lords decision in Lexington Insurance Co. v. AGF Insurance Co. [2009] UKHL 40.  The House ruled that two proportional facultative reinsurers were not obligated to indemnify the cedent for their share of the entire amount of a judgment a Washington State court rendered against the cedent in an environmental coverage action.  The judgment, which was based on Pennsylvania law, rendered the cedent liable under the policy jointly and severally for property damage caused by environmental contamination that occurred before, during and after the three-year policy period.  The House ruled that the reinsurers could be held liable only for their respective shares of the loss that occurred during the three-year term of the reinsurance contract (which was concurrent with that of the cedent’s policy), not their shares of the total amount of loss for which the Washington judgment held the cedent liable under the reinsured policy. 

In this Part II we briefly summarize the pertinent background of the case, walk the reader through the House’s reasoning and offer a few parting thoughts.      Continue Reading »

House of Lords Hands Down Landmark Reinsurance Decision: Lexington Insurance Co. v. AGF Insurance Ltd.

August 18th, 2009 Asbestos-Related Claims, Environmental Contamination Claims, Follow-the-Settlements/Follow-the Fortunes, House of Lords, Reinsurance Allocation, Reinsurance Claims Comments Off on House of Lords Hands Down Landmark Reinsurance Decision: Lexington Insurance Co. v. AGF Insurance Ltd.

Part I of a Two-Part Post

Introduction

Effective October 1, 2009 the House of Lords will be replaced by the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom (more information here).  In what may be among its last official acts, on July 30, 2009 the House decided an important reinsurance case concerning the scope of a reinsurer’s indemnity obligation to a U.S. cedent under English law.  See Lexington Insurance Co. v. AGF Insurance Co. [2009] UKHL 40.  The reinsurance contract was back-to-back with the reinsured policy in all but one respect:  it was governed by English law, while the insurance policy was, in the event of coverage litigation, potentially subject to the laws of any number of U.S. jurisdictions, depending on venue, applicable choice of law rules and other considerations.  Relying on a long-line of English law precedent, and distinguishing other precedent, the House ruled that a proportional facultative reinsurer was not obligated to indemnify the cedent for the reinsurer’s share of the entire amount of a judgment a state court in Washington rendered against the cedent.  The judgment resulted from a Washington Supreme Court decision which, applying Pennsylvania law, ruled that the cedent was jointly and severally liable under its policy for property damage caused by environmental contamination that occurred before, during and after the cedent’s three-year policy period.  The House said that, judgment or no judgment, the reinsurer agreed to reinsure only loss or damage occurring during the coterminous, three-year period of the reinsurance contract, and the reinsurer’s obligation was limited to its share of that loss. 

The House’s decision is likely to be controversial.  In this Part I of a two-part post, we shall discuss the controversy and seek to allay it a bit.  In Part II we’ll walk the reader through that reasoning and offer some parting comments. 

The Controversy

Complex environmental-contamination and asbestos-related claims are anything if not costly.  American insurers have been fighting an expensive, multi-front war with their insureds for many years over the scope and extent of their liability for these claims.  They raise a myriad of issues and are potentially governed by the laws of at least fifty different jurisdictions (some sympathetic to insurers, some not).   These jurisdictions have adopted different approaches to resolving the issues (some favorable to insurers, some not), which means that no matter where may be the venue, complex choice-of-law questions are likely to arise.  And the coverage actions usually involve multiple insurers, sites, claimants, years of coverage, and layers of coverage.  The amount at stake and the concomitant expense can be staggering.  For the most part, these claims and coverage disputes — let alone how some courts might resolve them — could not reasonably have been anticipated at the time when most of the occurrence policies on which they arose were written (generally prior to 1980 and sometimes going back to the 1930s).  Continue Reading »

Disputing has Published Part III of our Stolt-Nielsen, S.A. v. AnimalFeeds Int’l Corp. Guest Post

August 17th, 2009 Arbitrability, Authority of Arbitrators, Class Action Arbitration, Consolidation of Arbitration Proceedings, Guest Posts, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, United States Supreme Court Comments Off on Disputing has Published Part III of our Stolt-Nielsen, S.A. v. AnimalFeeds Int’l Corp. Guest Post

Last week we announced that  Disputing had published Part II of our four-part guest post on Stolt-Nielsen, S.A. v. AnimalFeeds Int’l Corp., 548 F.3d 85 (2d Cir. 2009), petition for cert. granted June 15, 2009 (No. 08-1198) (Disputing post here).  Today, Disputing published Part III, which discusses the background and procedural history of the Stolt-Nielsen case and identifies the key issues that the United States Supreme Court will likely consider in deciding the case.  

The Supreme Court’s decision in Stolt-Nielsen may have some important ramifications for both commercial and consumer arbitration.  And soon-to-be Justice Sotomayor may provide the swing vote in the case.  So for advance coverage, tune into Disputing….

Guest Post: The Argument for Judicial Power to Void Mandatory Arbitration Agreements and Class Action Waivers on State Public Policy Grounds

August 17th, 2009 Class Action Arbitration, Class Action Waivers, Commercial and Industry Arbitration and Mediation Group, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court 1 Comment »

By Professor Peter Friedman         

In my recent two-part guest post published in Disputing about recent state court decisions striking down mandatory arbitration clauses and class action waivers in consumer, online transactions, I concluded that those courts were “acting in legitimate ways [by requiring contract] disputes to be resolved in ways that provide relief for and deterrence of wrongdoing.”   (Part I here; Part II here)  In particular, I applauded the  New Mexico Supreme Court and the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for making explicit the purely public policy grounds for invalidating mandatory arbitration clauses and class action waivers in consumer transactions.  See  Feeney v. Dell Inc., ___ Mass. ___ (July 2, 2009); Fiser v. Dell Computer Corp., ___ P.3d ___ (N.M. June 27, 2009). The courts concluded that the provisions deprived consumers of any meaningful remedies for the defendants’ alleged breaches of contract and that those provisions were therefore in conflict with strong state policies in favor of consumer protection.

It is worth examining more closely, however, my reasons for believing the courts in these cases were acting in judicially legitimate ways.  It might be suggested, for example, that, if a court could strike these particular provisions down on public policy it had articulated without explicit statutory support, there would be nothing to stop courts from striking down any arbitration provisions on judicially formulated public policy grounds. Continue Reading »

Introducing Guest-Blogger Professor Peter Friedman: “The Argument for Judicial Power to Void Mandatory Arbitration Agreements and Class Action Waivers on State Public Policy Grounds”

August 17th, 2009 Class Action Arbitration, Class Action Waivers, Commercial and Industry Arbitration and Mediation Group, Consolidation of Arbitration Proceedings, Guest Posts, Uncategorized Comments Off on Introducing Guest-Blogger Professor Peter Friedman: “The Argument for Judicial Power to Void Mandatory Arbitration Agreements and Class Action Waivers on State Public Policy Grounds”

Today we present a guest post by Professor Peter Friedman concerning the argument for judicial power to void class action waivers and arbitration agreements based on state public policy grounds. 

I met Peter through the LinkedIn Commercial and Industry Arbitration Group (learn about the group here).   He’s a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Detroit Mercy Law School, where he teaches Contracts and Core Concepts.  He also teaches U.S. Contract Law at the University of Windsor and the Universiteit van Amsterdam.  He is currently on leave from the Case Western University School of Law, where he has been on the faculty since January 1996.  He’s a very smart, creative guy who is devoted to the law, critical analysis of important legal issues, and, even more importantly, legal education.    

Prior to entering the academic world, Peter spent eleven years immersed in the practice of commercial litigation in New York City, most recently as a partner in the New York City office of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP.  He graduated with his J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1984 and his A.B. in Ancient Greek and Latin from Brown University in 1981.

Since August 2008, Peter has written a blog, Ruling Imagination: Law and Creativity, that explores the ways law affects creative endeavors and the ways creativity informs the practice of law.  Prior to Ruling Imagination, he authored What is Fair Use?, a blog he wrote in connection with an assignment in one of his legal writing classes in which his students drafted cross-motions for summary judgment for a copyright infringement lawsuit.  Just this month Peter has also begun a blog, 1L Contracts, in which he intends to explore issues connected with the law of contracts as they arise through the coming academic year in his Contracts class at Detroit Mercy. Continue Reading »

Global Arbitration Review Quotes Loree Reinsurance and Arbitration Law Forum’s Critical Analysis of ReliaStar Life Ins. Co. v. EMC Nat’l Life Co.

August 10th, 2009 Arbitrability, Authority of Arbitrators, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit 2 Comments »

On April 28, 2009 we published “ReliaStar Life Insurance Co. v. EMC National Life Co.: Critical Analysis of an Important Reinsurance Arbitration Decision,”  available here.  On July 13, 2009 the London-based  Global Arbitration Review published an interesting article about the Second Circuit’s decision in ReliaStar, which quoted from our critical analysis:  

Writing shortly after the appeal court’s decision, Philip Loree Jr of New York firm Loree & Loree, said the court had “violated New York contract interpretation rules.” He said that, according to New York law, “to ascertain whether a contract is ambiguous, courts are required to focus on what is said, not what is omitted.” “Given that the pre-eminent purpose of the Federal Arbitration Act is to enforce the parties’ arbitration agreement as written, this case may be one of those rare Second Circuit decisions that warrant rehearing and reversal en banc,” he added.

You can find the article (subscription only) here:  ‘Bad Faith’ Costs Decision Upheld, Global Arbitration Review, July 13, 2009, our summary of the decision here, our critical analysis here, and further commentary here.  Disputing’s coverage of the case can be found here and here.

Disputing Has Published Part II of our Stolt-Nielsen, S.A. v. AnimalFeeds Int’l Co. Guest Post

August 10th, 2009 Arbitrability, Authority of Arbitrators, Class Action Arbitration, General, Guest Posts Comments Off on Disputing Has Published Part II of our Stolt-Nielsen, S.A. v. AnimalFeeds Int’l Co. Guest Post

Last week we announced that  Disputing had published Part I of our four-part guest post on Stolt-Nielsen S.A. v. AnimalFeeds Int’l Corp., 548 F.3d 85 (2d Cir. 2009), petition for cert. granted June 15, 2009 (No. 08-1198) (post here).  Today, Disputing published Part II, which discusses Green Tree Financial Corp. v. Bazzle, 539 U.S. 444 (2003), the case that provides the legal landscape against which the Supreme Court will decide Stolt-Nielsen.   You can read Part II here.   We expect Disputing will publish Part III later this week, with Part IV to follow.  

The Supreme Court’s decision in Stolt-Nielsen may have some important ramifications for both commercial and consumer arbitration.  And soon-to-be Justice Sotomayor may provide the swing vote in the case.  So for advance coverage, tune into Disputing….