Principles of Insurance Law

•  The critical role of insurance binders as temporary forms of insurance as illustrated in the World Trade Center property insurance disputes resulting from the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001;
•  The continuing debate between ""legal formalists"" and ""legal functionalists"" for ""the heart and soul"" of insurance contract law;
 What constitutes a policyholder's ""reasonable expectation"" regarding coverage;
•  The current property and liability insurance ""crisis"";
•  Risk management and self-insurance issues;
•  Emerging, and frequently conflicting, case law concerning the intersection of insurance law and federal anti-discrimination regulation;
•  Ongoing interpretive battles over the preemptive scope of ERISA;
•   The United States Supreme Court ruling that a California statute attempting to leverage European insurers into honoring commitments to Holocaust era policies is preempted by the Executive's power over foreign affairs;
•  The State Farm v. Campbell decision, which struck down a $145 million punitive damages award in an insurance bad faith claim as well as setting more restrictive parameters for the recovery of punitive damages;
•  New issues over the dividing line between ""tangible"" property typically covered under a property insurance policy and ""intangible"" property, which is typically excluded - an issue of increasing importance in the digital and cyber age;
•  Refinement of liability insurance law regarding trigger of coverage, duty to defend, reimbursement of defense costs, and apportionment of insurer and policyholder responsibility for liability payments;
• The difficult-to-harmonize decisions concerning when a loss arises out of the ""use"" of an automobile;
•  Insurer bad faith and the availability, if any, of actions against a policyholder for ""reverse bad faith""; and
•  he degree to which excess insurance and reinsurance may be subject to modified approaches to insurance policy construction.