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Conflict of Laws And Insurance Disputes: Choice of Law or Choice of Outcomes?

By Marc S. Mayerson
September 29, 2006

Most insurance policies are silent as to which state's substantive law governs their terms. As a result, insurance-coverage lawyers often find ourselves wading deep into the world of choice of law and conflict of laws. Conflicts issues are (largely) untethered from the merits of a case, yet can be outcome determinative; so it is crucial to understand and focus on choice-of-law principles in com-plex insurance disputes, as they can yield the application of different state laws within a single case to issues of contract formation, performance, and bad faith.

There are two paradigmatic approaches to choice of law, but nuances in every state affect the analysis. What one can call the First Restatement or lex loci contractus approach looks to some formal act involved in the making of a contract and holds that the location of that act tells one which state's law governs. Now more than 75 years old, several states still follow its teachings.

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