Principles of Insurance Law

Principles of Insurance Law

Over the past two decades, there have been a number of important developments in the areas of liability, property, and life and health insurance that have significantly changed insurance law. Accordingly, the Fourth Edition of <b><i>Principles of Insurance Law </b></i>has been substantially rewritten, reformatted, and refocused in order to offer the insurance law student and practitioner a broad perspective of both traditional insurance law concepts and cutting-edge legal issues affecting contemporary insurance law theory and practice. This edition not only expands the scope of topical coverage, but also segments the law of insurance in a manner more amenable to study, as well as facilitating the recombination and reordering of the chapters as desired by individual instructors. The Fourth Edition of <b><i>Principles of Insurance Law </b></i>includes new and expanded treatment of important insurance law developments, including:<p> •  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; <br> •  The continuing debate between ""legal formalists"" and ""legal functionalists"" for ""the heart and soul"" of insurance contract law; <br>  What constitutes a policyholder's ""reasonable expectation"" regarding coverage; <br> •  The current property and liability insurance ""crisis""; <br> •  Risk management and self-insurance issues; <br> •  Emerging, and frequently conflicting, case law concerning the intersection of insurance law and federal anti-discrimination regulation; <br> •  Ongoing interpretive battles over the preemptive scope of ERISA; <br> •   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; <br>•  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; <br> •  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; <br> •  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; <br> • The difficult-to-harmonize decisions concerning when a loss arises out of the ""use"" of an automobile; <br> •  Insurer bad faith and the availability, if any, of actions against a policyholder for ""reverse bad faith""; and<br> •  he degree to which excess insurance and reinsurance may be subject to modified approaches to insurance policy construction.