Legal insights on insurance litigation in the State of Tennessee
I came in this morning to an email from my partner, Justin Gilbert. Justin lost a jury trial last week in Decatur County Circuit Court, and offered some insightful thoughts about the experience in a short article he entitled, “Please Just Give Me a Trial by Ambush.” Here’s an excerpt:
The point
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Parks’ recent post about whether an insured has to rebuild at the same location in order to recover replacement cost got me thinking, and then researching. Here’s what I found:
Although none in Tennessee, there are a dozen or so cases across the country dealing with the issue of whether an insured has to rebuild…
In most cases, the answer is no. Most policies use replacement cost at a specific location as a measure of the maximum recovery that can be afforded under a property insurance policy. Most policies contain a “Valuation” condition similar to the following:
B. Replacement Cost – When replacement cost is shown on the “declarations” for covered property, …
duty defend indemnify “duty to defend” broad…
Continue Reading The Little Recognized Side Effect of the Broad Duty to Defend
Although the focus of this blog was, and will remain, first-party insurance coverage litigation, many of our readers have asked if we are going to include third-party coverage litigation topics in the blog. While we initially wanted to remain “purists,” so to speak, demand is such that we will create a separate “Category” entitled “Third-Party …
A fine lawyer and an even better friend, Jonathan Bobbitt, sent an article around the office this morning that reminded me of something very important – the value of knowing your priorities, and, just as importantly, possessing the ability to disregard the unimportant. The article was written by Peter Bregman, and is entitled “Two…
The Tennessee Court of Appeals, Eastern Section, issued a new opinion yesterday interpreting the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act. The case, Timoshchuk v. Long of Chattanooga Mercedes-Benz et al (.pdf), arose from a Mercedes dealer’s sale of a "new" Mercedes which turned out to be not so new. A few months after purchasing…
Several attorneys have been appointed to revise the Local Rules for the federal courts in West Tennessee. The committee is scheduled to meet in mid-October and the committee members are actively seeking input from the local bar for suggestions and comments regarding revisions to the present Local Rules. A very significant portion of my firm’s…
An Oklahoma insurance lawyer, Steven Buckman, recently started a new blog called Oklahoma Insurance Law. Its well written with a bit of comedy, including frequent accounts with "Bubba" (the redneck policyholder) and the "tall building lawyer" (the insurer’s counsel).
In the latest post, the topic was whether deleting photographs from a cell phone …
In the past two weeks, I have mediated three first party property cases. None of them was alike, and I wanted to share some thoughts on approaching such mediations from the carrier’s perspective, and some comments on the way the insureds have approached the mediation – making it better or worse for fruitful negotiations.
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