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Archive for the ‘Reinsurance Arbitration’ Category

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Time-on-the-Risk Allocation: Are Periods when Coverage is Unavailable in the Market Part of the Time-on-the-Risk?  

September 23rd, 2018 Absolute Pollution Exclusions, Allocation, Allocation of Settlements, Claims Handling, Follow-the-Settlements/Follow-the Fortunes, Insurance Contracts, Insurance Coverage, Long-Tail Claims, New York Court of Appeals, New York State Courts, Reinsurance Allocation, Reinsurance Arbitration, Reinsurance Claims, Reinsurance Litigation, Sudden and Accidental Pollution Exclusions Comments Off on Time-on-the-Risk Allocation: Are Periods when Coverage is Unavailable in the Market Part of the Time-on-the-Risk?  
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We’ve discussed various issues concerning the allocation of asbestos or hazardous waste claims by insurers or cedents in situations where losses occur in multiple policy periods over time. (See here, here, & here.) Issues relating to allocation of such claims have, for many years, arisen in both insurance coverage cases and reinsurance litigation and arbitration, and they still do.

Earlier this year in Keyspan Gas East Corp. v. Munich Reins. Am., Inc., ___ N.Y.3d ___, N.Y. Slip Op. 2116 (March 27, 2018), New York State’s highest court held that, where applicable policy language contemplates a pro-rata time-on-the-risk allocation of loss, the damages or liability should be allocated over the entire period during which it occurred, including periods during which insurance was not available in the market because of exclusions or other reasons. While the outcomes it will generate are more favorable to insurers than policyholders, the Keyspan decision is sound and consistent with prior New York Court of Appeals cases on allocation and insurance generally. Given New York’s highest court’s historically excellent reputation for resolving insurance and reinsurance issues in an objectively fair and commercially reasonable manner, we suspect that Keyspan may prove to be an influential decision that other states will consider carefully when they are faced with questions concerning what should or should not be counted as part of the time-on-the-risk.

Time-on-the Risk Allocation: Contextual Background

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Hazardous waste and asbestos claims are unique because the “injury producing harm is gradual and continuous and typically spans multiple insurance policy periods….” Keyspan, 2018 N.Y. Slip Op. 2116, at *4. Typically the “environmental contamination” or asbestos injury “that occurred in any given year is unidentifiable and indivisible from the total resulting damages.” See 2018 N.Y. Slip Op. at 2.

Allocating a multi-policy-period loss in different ways can have very significant financial consequences to reinsurers and cedents, and insurers and their insureds. The amount of loss allocated to a given policy determines the applicability of deductibles, the exhaustion (or non-exhaustion) of limits, and the amount the insured is entitled to collect from the insurer under each policy. It factors into whether reinsurance retentions have been met or whether reinsurance contract limits have been exceeded. It can even determine whether certain insurers (e.g. excess or umbrella carriers) or reinsurers are responsible for any of the loss. Continue Reading »

The Fifth Circuit’s PoolRe Decision: Captives, Insurance, Reinsurance, Arbitration, Multiple Parties, Multiple Contracts, Conflicting Arbitration Agreements: Does it Get any Better than this?!

April 17th, 2015 Appellate Practice, Arbitrability, Arbitration Agreements, Arbitration as a Matter of Consent, Arbitration Practice and Procedure, Arbitration Provider Rules, Arbitration Risks, Arbitrator Selection and Qualification Provisions, Authority of Arbitrators, Awards, Captive Insurance Companies, Confirmation of Awards, Consolidation of Arbitration Proceedings, Contract Interpretation, Dispute Risk - Frequency and Severity, Drafting Arbitration Agreements, Federal Courts, Grounds for Vacatur, Making Decisions about Arbitration, Managing Dispute Risks, Outcome Risk, Practice and Procedure, Reinsurance Arbitration, Small and Medium-Sized Business Arbitration Risk, Small Business B-2-B Arbitration, United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Comments Off on The Fifth Circuit’s PoolRe Decision: Captives, Insurance, Reinsurance, Arbitration, Multiple Parties, Multiple Contracts, Conflicting Arbitration Agreements: Does it Get any Better than this?!

Part I: PoolRe Introduction and Background

 Introduction

yay-4463438-digitalArbitration offers rough justice on the merits. Arbitrators have broad discretion not only in deciding the dispute but in fashioning remedies. Skilled, experienced and responsible arbitrators can cut through all sorts of legal and contractual “red tape” to resolve a dispute, applying just enough gloss on the law and the contract to make things work in a businesslike fashion while remaining true to the “essence of the agreement.”  Applied just so, that kind of rough justice is sometimes exactly what the parties need to make their agreement work, and in some cases, preserve (or even improve) their commercial relationship going forward. And it is not something that Court adjudication necessarily—or even ordinarily—can achieve.

But rough justice does not govern whether the parties agreed to arbitrate, who’s bound by an arbitration agreement and whether the parties agreed to delegate authority to a particular arbitrator or to follow a particular method of arbitrator selection as set forth in the parties’ agreement. Those questions are governed principally by state contract law and—particularly when multiple agreements and multiple parties are involved, or the question concerns whether an arbitrator was validly appointed—they frequently must be decided by courts, even if some or all of the parties have clearly and unmistakably agreed to submit arbitrability questions to arbitration.

Details, Details.  .  .

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Details always matter, but they are all the more important when a dispute will presumably be decided under state contract law rules and principles by a decision maker whose decisions—unlike those of an arbitrator—are often subject to independent review by an appellate court. Courts generally do not (or at least are not supposed to) substitute rough justice, pragmatism or equity in place of contract law, which is not always so flexible. The casebooks are littered with examples where doing so might arguably have achieved a more desirable outcome but doing so could not be squared with contract rules and principals in a way that befitted higher-court precedent and the circumstances apparently did not warrant departure from precedent.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision in PoolRe Ins. Corp. v. Organizational Strategies, Inc., No. 14-20433, slip op. (5th Cir. April 7, 2015), is a case where the parties apparently lost sight of some important details in their apparent haste to do a deal that unfortunately went sour. Then, an arbitrator appointed under one of the contracts compounded the problem by making an award that could not even arguably be squared with the clear terms of one of the contracts’ arbitration agreements.

 

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The parties that were probably best positioned to ensure that the arbitration agreements in the various service-provider and reinsurance contracts probably lost the most, and perhaps to some extent at least, there’s some poetic justice to that. They claimed the clients breached their service contracts, the clients said the service providers breached the contracts and independent legal duties and the arbitrator ruled in favor of the service providers. The district court, as we’ll see, properly vacated the award and the Fifth Circuit affirmed.  Now the parties are essentially back at square one, albeit much worse for the wear in terms of legal expenses and protracted delay.

The facts and procedural history of the case is somewhat complex, but critically important. Not only do they drive the outcome but they read like a primer on what not to do when attempting to devise a cost-effective arbitration program for disputes that may involve multiple parties and interrelated and interdependent contracts. And they demonstrate pretty starkly some of the consequences that parties can suffer when: (a) they do not properly structure their agreement; and (b) end up with an arbitrator who is not be as savvy as he or she might otherwise be about scope of authority (or simply makes a bad call about it).

We do not mean to suggest that the Arbitrator in this case was in any way incompetent or otherwise blameworthy. To err is human, and even if the arbitrator had made the best permissible decision possible under the circumstances, the parties would still be exposed to the consequences of  having not properly structured their arbitration agreements. The arbitrator’s missteps certainly exacerbated the problem, but such things are foreseeable risks that the parties could have managed by, for example, agreeing to an arbitration agreement that was drafted in simple, unambiguous  terms governing what is supposed to happen in the event of a multi-contract, multi-party dispute like the one at issue. Such disputes were foreseeable, as they are in any relatively complex transaction involving multiple parties and multiple interrelated contracts.

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The mess that is described in the balance of this post could have  been avoided had some or all of the parties: (a) understood that their dispute resolution system needed the attention of a skilled and experienced arbitration lawyer; and (b) were willing to invest the modest sum needed to make that possible. Apparently the parties did not appreciate the risks they faced or, if they did, they made a conscious decision to ignore them, perhaps finding it preferable to avoid paying a few extra thousand dollars up front, roll the dice and hope that all would turn out well (and certainly not as it did).

Perhaps one might wonder what the odds were that an underlying dispute like the one at issue would arise. Nobody knows the precise answer, of course, but we’d have to say there was a meaningful risk in view of the nature and structure of the transaction. And given the rather obvious and dramatic disparity between the two arbitration agreements, the risk that Federal Arbitration Act enforcement proceedings would be necessary was likewise meaningful and fairly easy to foresee.

Suppose the risk was 1 in 6—that is, there was approximately a 17% chance that the parties would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and spend at least an additional year or more embroiled in Federal Arbitration Act enforcement litigation centered on issues collateral to the merits. If we’re talking about a single round roll of a single die, with the idea being to avoid one possible outcome (represented by a whole number ranging from one to six), then that’s about as minimal a risk as could be measured (since there are only six possible outcomes). It also happens to be the same risk one would accept were one to play a round of Russian Roulette with a six-round revolver and a single bullet.

The point is that it is not just a matter of assessing the odds; severity of potential outcomes obviously drives risk assessment and management decisions as well. Most responsible corporate officers and directors aren’t going to take on a Russian-Roulette type risk (i.e., a “bet-the-company” risk) unless they have no choice, and if they must take the risk, they do what they reasonably can to minimize the odds the undesirable outcome will materialize and to mitigate any loss incurred if it does.

Here, the outcome that could have been avoided was very costly—though presumably not a death knell for either party— whereas the cost of substantially decreasing the likelihood of that outcome would probably have been less than a percentage point of the loss.

What would you have done?

Continue Reading »

Arbitrator-Imposed Claims Protocols, Honorable Engagement and Access-to-Records: First State Ins. Co. v. National Cas. Co.

April 10th, 2015 Access to Records, Arbitration Practice and Procedure, Arbitrator-Imposed Claims Protocols, Authority of Arbitrators, Claims Handling, Follow-the-Settlements/Follow-the Fortunes, Grounds for Vacatur, Honorable Engagement, Judicial Review of Arbitration Awards, Practice and Procedure, Reinsurance Arbitration, Reinsurance Claims, United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit Comments Off on Arbitrator-Imposed Claims Protocols, Honorable Engagement and Access-to-Records: First State Ins. Co. v. National Cas. Co.

Introduction

yay-10424184---CopyAt first glance the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit’s opinion in First State Ins. Co. v. National Cas. Co., No. 14-1644, slip op. (1st Cir. Mar. 20, 2015) appears to be an honorable engagement clause case, but it is really an arbitrator-imposed-claims-payment-protocol case.  First State concerned a claims protocol (the “Claims Protocol”) which said claims payments “may be made subject to an appropriate reservation of rights by [the reinsurer] in instances where it has or does identify specific facts  which  create a reasonable question regarding coverage under the subject reinsurance agreement(s).” It also explained that “[p]ayment obligations on the part of [the reinsurer] are not conditioned upon the exercise of its right to audit or the production of additional information or documents, other than those provided by [the cedent] as described . . .[in the portion of the protocol specifying the cedent’s proof-of-loss requirements].” Slip op. at 3.

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The reinsurer contended the protocol’s reservation-of-rights procedure impaired its contractual rights to access of records, including its right to recoup claim payments in circumstances where, as of the time the Claims Protocol required the reinsurer to pay a  claim, the reinsurer had not yet been given the opportunity to inspect the cedent’s records concerning the claim and thus would not have the opportunity to determine whether there were “specific facts which create a reasonable question regarding coverage.  .  . ”  That, argued the reinsurer, denied or effectively impaired its contractual rights in a least two ways: (a) once it paid a claim as required by the Protocol without reserving its rights based on “specific facts” creating a reasonable question about coverage, then the Cedent could refuse to provide it access to its records of the claim; and (b) even if the cedent provided post-payment access-to-records, and even if the reinsurer’s post-payment audit uncovered for the first time specific facts demonstrating the claim was invalid, the Protocol’s reservation of rights feature would foreclose the reinsurer from obtaining recoupment of the claim unless the reinsurer somehow had knowledge of those specific facts, and asserted them at the time it was required to pay the claim.

Had the reinsurer’s interpretation of the Claims Protocol’s reservation of rights procedure been the only one to which it was susceptible, then the reinsurer’s Section 10(a)(4) challenge might have succeeded. As it turned out, there was at least one other interpretation of the Protocol, and under that interpretation, the reinsurer’s access-to-records and recoupment rights were not foreclosed by the reinsurer not making a Claims-Protocol-compliant reservation of rights.

So the Court quite correctly affirmed the district court’s decision to confirm the award. But National Casualty did not walk away empty handed. As we’ll see, the Court’s opinion confers upon National Casualty a deserved benefit that is arguably as valuable as would have been a decision reversing the district court’s judgment with instructions to vacate the arbitration award.

Let’s first briefly review what transpired in First State, and what the Court, in Senior Circuit Court Judge Bruce M. Selya’s sometimes arcane and colorful—but always clear, concise and well-organized— prose, had to say about it. Continue Reading »

Pine Top Receivables, LLC v. Banco De Seguros Del Estado:  The Seventh Circuit Exorcises some Ghosts of Reinsurance Past, but has it Summoned an Erie Ghost of Reinsurance Future?

November 22nd, 2014 Appellate Jurisdiction, Appellate Practice, Arbitrability, Arbitration Agreements, Arbitration Practice and Procedure, Collateral Requirements for Unauthorized Reinsurance, Contract Interpretation, Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, FAA Chapter 3, Federal Courts, Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, Insolvency Proceedings, Inter-American Convention on International Commercial Arbitration, McCarran-Ferguson Act, New York Convention, Panama Convention, Pre-Answer Security, Reinsurance Arbitration, Reinsurance Claims, Reinsurance Litigation, Security Requirements, Unauthorized Reinsurance, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, United States Supreme Court Comments Off on Pine Top Receivables, LLC v. Banco De Seguros Del Estado:  The Seventh Circuit Exorcises some Ghosts of Reinsurance Past, but has it Summoned an Erie Ghost of Reinsurance Future?

Part II: What Transpired in Pine Top?

 

In our last post on  Pine Top Receivables, LLC v. Banco De Seguros Del Estado, ___ F.3d ___, Nos. 13-1364/2331, slip op. (7th Cir. Nov. 7, 2014) (per curiam) (here), we offered our take on the case and what it might mean, particularly as respects the Court’s suggestion that state pre-answer security statutes may be procedural under the Erie doctrine, possibly inconsistent with federal procedural law and thus inapplicable in diversity cases. Now let’s take a closer look at what transpired in Pine Top, for even apart from the Court’s allusion to a possible Erie doctrine issue (our Erie ghost of reinsurance future), it involved a number of classic reinsurance issues (our ghosts of reinsurance past), as well as a notable appellate jurisdiction issue and the question whether the assignee of the insolvent ceding company acquired the right to demand arbitration against the reinsurer.  Continue Reading »

What is the Statute of Limitations for a Reinsurance Claim under New York Law and When does it Begin to Run?

October 6th, 2014 Choice-of-Law Provisions, Claims Handling, Contract Interpretation, New York Court of Appeals, New York State Courts, Nuts & Bolts: Reinsurance, Reinsurance Arbitration, Reinsurance Claims, Retrospectively-Rated Premium Contracts, State Courts, Statute of Limitations Comments Off on What is the Statute of Limitations for a Reinsurance Claim under New York Law and When does it Begin to Run?

 Part IV.B

 Why is Hahn Automotive v. American Zurich Ins. Co. Important?

Introduction

Now that we’ve taken a closer look at Hahn Automotive Warehouse, Inc. v. American Zurich Ins. Co., 18 N.Y.3d 765 (2012), let’s step back a bit and consider what it means both in general and in the reinsurance-claim-statute-of-limitations scheme of things.

As will be explained in this Part VI.B, Part VI.C, and Part VI.D, Hahn:

  1. Creates a new general rule, which effectively extends to a larger universe of contracts a statute of limitations accrual principle that it had applied only to certain specific types of contracts, including contracts of indemnity;
  2. Demonstrates that, outside the limited context of express conditions, breach-of-contract statute-of-limitations accrual is not exclusively a matter of party intent;
  3. Suggests that the New York Court of Appeals, if faced with an accrual question where the obligee’s demand is an express condition to the obligor’s liability, would probably not permit accrual to be delayed for more than a relatively brief period measured from the date on which the obligee was legally entitled to demand payment;
  4. All but forecloses an argument that a court may justify a delay in the statute of limitations by deeming a demand requirement to be an implied condition;
  5. Creates an analytic framework for determining breach-of-contract statute-of-limitations accrual questions that is at least as well-suited to excess-of-loss reinsurance contracts as it is to retrospective premium contracts;
  6.  Will likely be applied to reinsurance contract statute-of-limitations questions, that cedents or reinsurers may in the past have assumed would be governed by Continental Cas. Co. v. Stronghold Ins. Co., 77 F.3d 16 (2d Cir. 1996); and
  7. If so applied to a situation where, as in Stronghold: (a) the reinsurance contract does not unambiguously condition the reinsurers’ liability on claims presentation; and (b) the cedent settled the underlying insurance claims more than six-years before commencing their action, will, all else equal, likely require a finding that the cedent’s claims are time-barred.

Hahn therefore has some important claims management implications for both cedents and reinsurers, which we’ll discuss in Part IV.E.

But there is, as no doubt many readers have discerned, a proverbial “elephant in the room:” arbitration. Arbitration agreements are exceedingly common in reinsurance contracts, particularly in treaties. In Part V., we’ll discuss the profound effect that the choice between judicial and arbitral resolution of a controversy can have on statute of limitations questions, and how that choice bears on cedent and reinsurer time-bar strategy.

Finally, there is another very important—and all too frequently overlooked— consideration that we would arguably be remiss not to discuss: choice-of-law. Reinsurance disputes, like so many of their other commercial counterparts, frequently cross state and national borders, raising horizontal choice-of-law issues. But in many (indeed, probably most U.S.) jurisdictions, including New York, choice-of-law rules that determine what substantive rules of decision apply (i.e., what rules of decision apply to merits-related issues) do not determine what statute-of-limitations rules apply, and that may be true (as it ordinarily is in New York) even where parties agree that the law of State X governs their agreement.

In New York, that issue is ordinarily determined by New York’s borrowing statute, New York Civ. Prac. L. § 202, many other states have similar (although not necessarily identical) borrowing statutes and at least a few other states may either simply follow the traditional rule that forum law governs statute of limitations or apply substantive choice-of-law rules to determine the applicable statute of limitations. Part VI will thus address choice-of-law questions pertinent to the statute of limitations, focusing on New York’s borrowing statute, and discuss how choice-of-law issues affect time-bar strategy. Continue Reading »

ROM Management Reinsurance Mgt. Co. v. Continental Ins. Co.: Can Parties Agree State Arbitration Law Governs their Arbitration even if the Federal Arbitration Act Applies?

April 15th, 2014 Arbitrability, Arbitration Agreements, Arbitration and Mediation FAQs, Arbitration Practice and Procedure, Authority of Arbitrators, Choice-of-Law Provisions, Contract Interpretation, New York Court of Appeals, New York State Courts, Nuts & Bolts: Arbitration, Practice and Procedure, Reinsurance Arbitration, State Arbitration Law, Statute of Limitations, Stay of Arbitration, United States Supreme Court Comments Off on ROM Management Reinsurance Mgt. Co. v. Continental Ins. Co.: Can Parties Agree State Arbitration Law Governs their Arbitration even if the Federal Arbitration Act Applies?

Introduction

The Federal Arbitration Act (the “FAA”)’s ordinarily trumps state-law rules of arbitrability in state- and federal-court  disputes involving agreements falling under it.  But what happens when parties to an FAA-governed arbitration agreement have agreed that state law governs their agreement, or the enforcement of their agreement?

Odd as it may seem, the FAA allows parties to agree that state-law rules of arbitrability govern if the parties unambiguously agree that they govern, even if the result is that an issue subject to arbitration under the FAA is excluded from arbitration because of the parties’ choice of state arbitration law. That holds true so long as enforcing the parties’ choice of law does not “stand[] as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives” of the FAA. See Mastrobuono v. Shearson Lehman Hutton, Inc., 514 U.S. 52, 58-64 (1995); Volt Information Sciences, Inc. v. Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior Univ., 489 U. S. 468, 474-78 (1989); Diamond Waterproofing Sys., Inc. v. 55 Liberty Owners Corp., 4 N.Y.3d 247, 252-53 (2005); see, generally, Stolt-Nielsen, S.A. v. AnimalFeeds Int’l Corp., 559 U.S. 662, __, 130 S. Ct. 1758,1773-74 (2010). Because the whole point of the FAA is to promote arbitration by enforcing the parties’ arbitration agreement according to its terms, and because parties are free to clearly exclude issues from the scope of their arbitration agreement, giving effect to a applying a state-law rule of arbitrability does not contravene the FAA or its purposes and objectives. See Stolt-Nielsen, 130 S. Ct. at 1773 (“[W]e have said on numerous occasions that the central or primary purpose of the FAA is to ensure that private agreements to arbitrate are enforced according to their terms.”), 1774 (“Underscoring the consensual nature of private dispute resolution, we have held that parties are generally free to structure their arbitration agreements as they see fit[].  .  .  .  [and] may agree to limit the issues they choose to arbitrate.  .  .  .”) (quotations and citations omitted); Volt, 489 U.S. at 476-78.

In Re Rom Management Reinsurance Mgt. Co. v. Continental Ins. Co., ___ A.D.3d ___, 2014 N.Y. Slip Op. 01546 (1st Dep’t March 11, 2014).  New York’s Appellate Division, First Department (New York’s intermediate appellate court with jurisdiction over New York and Bronx Counties (i.e., New York City’s Boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx)), succinctly demonstrated how the parties’ unambiguous agreement to apply state-law arbitrability rules can narrow the issues that the parties would have been required to submit to arbitration had FAA rules of arbitrability applied. Continue Reading »

What is the Statute of Limitations for a Reinsurance Claim under New York Law and When does it Begin to Run?

March 4th, 2014 Claims Handling, Contract Interpretation, Internal Controls, New York Court of Appeals, New York State Courts, Nuts & Bolts, Nuts & Bolts: Reinsurance, Practice and Procedure, Reinsurance Arbitration, Reinsurance Claims, Statute of Limitations, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Comments Off on What is the Statute of Limitations for a Reinsurance Claim under New York Law and When does it Begin to Run?

Part II

In Part I (here) we determined the probable success of Reinsurer R’s motion to dismiss turns on whether the reinsurance contract expressly makes Cedent C’s presentation of claims a condition precedent to R’s obligation to pay them.  This Part II discusses in some detail New York law pertinent to contract statute-of-limitations accrual as it existed both before and after the Second Circuit’s 1996 decision in Continental Cas. Co. v. Stronghold Ins. Co., 77 F.3d 16 (2nd Cir. 1996), and before the New York Court of Appeals decided Hahn Automotive Warehouse, Inc. v. American Zurich Ins. Co., 18 N.Y.3d 765, 771 (2012).

Parts III and IV will discuss Stronghold and Hahn in some detail, and explain why we believe Stronghold misapplied New York law by concluding that the reinsurance contract before it expressly conditioned the reinsurers’ obligation to pay on the cedent presenting claims for payment. This Part II provides readers with the background required to understand better why we think that is so. Continue Reading »

HARRISMARTIN REINSURANCE SUMMIT: FRESH PERSPECTIVES ON THE REINSURANCE FRONT

August 22nd, 2011 Arbitration Practice and Procedure, Events, Reinsurance Arbitration, Reinsurance Claims, Reinsurance Mediation Comments Off on HARRISMARTIN REINSURANCE SUMMIT: FRESH PERSPECTIVES ON THE REINSURANCE FRONT

The frequency of reinsurance disputes, like most things in the insurance industry, is cyclical in nature, and over the last three or four years or so, the number of new disputes each year has declined fairly significantly compared to 1990 through 2005 levels.  I don’t have statistics to back that statement up, but it is informed by personal experience and numerous discussions with industry participants and their service providers.

Reduced dispute frequency is good news for the industry, but it doesn’t mean that industry executives should assume that reinsurance disputes are a thing of the past, ignore important developments that bear on their resolution, or become less proactive in their efforts to prevent them.  Keeping apprised of recent, pertinent reinsurance- and dispute-resolution-related legal, regulatory and economic developments is particularly important today, because there have been – and will likely continue to be – many that may bear on the nature and frequency of future reinsurance disputes.

To that end, a number of experienced industry executives and  in-house counsel, and a small group of outside counsel, have joined forces with HarrisMartin Publishing to put together a two-day conference designed to survey important, recent developments concerning reinsurance and reinsurance dispute resolution.  The conference — entitled “Reinsurance Summit:  Fresh Perspectives on the Reinsurance Front” — is scheduled to take place at the Lowes Philadelphia Hotel on September 22-23, 2011. Continue Reading »

New York Law Journal Article: “Arbitrator Evident Partiality Standard Under Scrutiny in ‘Scandinavian Re'”

May 20th, 2011 Appellate Practice, Arbitration Practice and Procedure, Ethics, Evident Partiality, Grounds for Vacatur, Practice and Procedure, Reinsurance Arbitration, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, United States Supreme Court Comments Off on New York Law Journal Article: “Arbitrator Evident Partiality Standard Under Scrutiny in ‘Scandinavian Re'”

On May 18, 2011 the New York Law Journal published in its Outside Counsel section an article I wrote, which argues that the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit should reverse the district court’s judgment in Scandinavian Reinsurance Co. v. Saint Paul Fire & Marine Ins. Co.,  No. 09 Civ. 9531(SAS), 2010 WL 653481, at *8 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 23, 2010), appeal pending No. 10-910-cv (2d Cir.). 

The article is reprinted below with permission, and I would like to thank Elaine Song, a member of the New York Law Journal’s editorial staff, for her assistance and work in getting this published in New York’s leading legal trade publication.   Continue Reading »

The Seventh Circuit Issues a Landmark Reinsurance Arbitration Opinion in Trustmark Ins. Co. v. John Hancock Life Ins. Co. (U.S.A.): Part III.A

March 9th, 2011 Arbitration Practice and Procedure, Awards, Ethics, Evident Partiality, Practice and Procedure, Reinsurance Arbitration, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York Comments Off on The Seventh Circuit Issues a Landmark Reinsurance Arbitration Opinion in Trustmark Ins. Co. v. John Hancock Life Ins. Co. (U.S.A.): Part III.A

Should the Second Circuit Reverse the District Court’s Judgment in Scandinavian Reinsurance Co. v. Saint Paul Fire & Marine Ins. Co.?

I.       Introduction

Parts I and II of this three-part post discussed Chief Judge Frank H. Easterbrook’s decision in Trustmark Ins. Co. v. John Hancock Life Ins. Co. (U.S.A.), No. 09-3682, 2011 WL 285156 (7th Cir. Jan. 31, 2011), and said that Trustmark, in conjunction with  Sphere Drake Ins. Co. v. All American Life Ins. Co., 307 F.3d 617, 622 (7th Cir. 2002) (Easterbrook, J.),  demonstrates that the district court should not have vacated on evident partiality grounds the arbitration award in Scandinavian Reinsurance Co. v. Saint Paul Fire & Marine Ins. Co, No. 09 Civ. 9531(SAS), 2010 WL 653481 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 23, 2010).     This Part III.A explains some of the reasons why that is so.  Continue Reading »

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