Legal insights on insurance litigation in the State of Tennessee
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…
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 …
If you’re a reader of insurance blogs, I’m certain you’ve read the recent warfare between Parks Chastain and Chip Merlin. They both make good points on the issue of advance payments (see their posts here and here). The truth is that there really is very little law in Tennessee concerning advance payments. Even so…
Tennessee’s valued policy law(T.C.A. 56-7-803) provides that an insurer is liable to the policyholder for the full policy limits if a total loss occurs. As a result, the big "fight" is often over the issue of whether a loss is "total" or "partial" in nature. Back in May, Parks Chastain commented here that the identity…
Parks Chastain recently wrote here about trigger happy policyholders prematurely filing lawsuits against insurance companies before a denial ever occurs. The reason for this is the provision in insurance policies that shortens the applicable statute of limitations to a period of usually one or two years from the date of the loss. As Parks mentioned…
This is one of those topics that comes up regularly. Does an insurer have to pay general contractors’ overhead and profit charges? The short answer is "Yes" but there are some exceptions. According to a 2005 Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals case (interpreting Tennessee law), the costs of a contractor (overhead and profit) are…
In a post several days ago, the co-author of this blog, Parks Chastain, commented that Tennessee’s statutory bad faith penalty should rarely be awarded against an insurer. In reaching this conclusion, he noted a 1961 federal district court case that stated that the the bad faith penalty should not be awarded unless the insurer’s conduct…
