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Highlights of the latest insurance cases from around the country.
During recent years, personal and advertising injury coverage has been the subject of many court decisions. Often those decisions have involved questions of coverage for copyright infringement under the 'advertising injury' prong of the coverage. However, there has been a wide range of cases involving issues under the 'personal injury' prong of the coverage. In many of these cases, courts have focused on the current wording of the language, without reference to the historical background of the personal injury provisions. That background demonstrates the breadth of the coverage.
After a liability insurance company denies coverage for a lawsuit filed against its policyholder, the policyholder is left to manage the defense and settlement of the lawsuit. Sometimes, the policyholder is forced to, or elects to, have another person or entity pay for the defense fees, settlement, or judgment. This leads to the inevitable question of whether the policyholder can recover from its liability insurer sums paid for defense fees, settlement, or judgment if, after the insurance company has wrongfully denied coverage, the policyholder's defense bills, settlement, or a judgment are paid for by a non-insured person or entity. While it should not matter who pays once a liability insurer has breached its contract, some courts have denied policyholders recoveries when a non-insured third-party steps in for the breaching liability insurer and pays the policyholder's defense fees, a settlement, or the judgment.
Features
Recent rulings of interest to you and your practice.
As we have discussed in Parts One and Two, there are many well-understood reasons medical mistakes are made ' lack of communication between providers and patients, inattention to detail, placing profit above patient care, and so forth.If we examine all these reasons for medical negligence while looking specifically at health care providers ' why a particular practitioner makes a mistake ' I find that mistakes often happen because doctors, nurses and others in the medical professions 'are' who they are, as people. It is a 'people phenomenon' ' a function of personality that manifests itself in the way a person works.
Features
On Jan. 18, 2006, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a final rule to revise the required format of prescription drug labels so as to enable physicians to find the information they need more readily. New features include a section called 'Highlights' and a Table of Contents. According to the FDA's press release, this is the first time in 25 years that the labeling requirements have undergone a major revision.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) (42 U.S.C.A ' 1320d) was enacted by Congress in 1996 and took effect on April 14, 2003. Although it was originally intended to increase access to health care by expanding insurance portability and renewability, privacy issues evolved due to developing technology that provided easy access to health information. As a result, Congress added additional safeguards to the seemingly innocuous Act. Such procedural safeguards have spawned a debate on whether HIPAA preempts state privacy laws, and if so, whether it prohibits ex parte communications between a plaintiff's treating physicians and defense counsel. Therefore, it's important for counsel to be aware of the various state and federal court decisions on the subject and the issues raised by both plaintiffs and defendants in this amorphous area of law.