General Liability

Expert Analysis

• 8 Insurer Takeaways From Sweeping Georgia Tort Reform

  

  Insurers should take note of several critical components of Georgia's tort litigation overhaul — including limitations on damages anchoring, procedural rules governing dismissals, and liability standards in negligent security cases — and adapt claims-handling strategies to reduce litigation risk, says Lucy Aquino at Cozen O'Connor.

• 3 Juror Psychology Principles For Expert Witness Testimony

  

  Expert witnesses can sometimes fall into traps when trying to teach juries complex topics by failing to consider the psychology of juror comprehension, but attorneys can help witnesses avoid these pitfalls with a deeper understanding of cognitive lag, chunking and learning styles, says Steve Wood at Courtroom Sciences.

• Court Rulings Warn Against Oversharing With Experts

  

  Recent decisions, including in bad faith insurance cases, demonstrate that when settlement information documents are inadvertently shared with testifying experts, courts may see no recourse but to strike the entire report or disqualify the expert, says Richard Mason at MasonADR.

• 7th Circ. Insurance Ruling Resolves Major Jurisdictional Issue

  

  The Seventh Circuit recently confirmed in StarStone Insurance v. Chicago that attorney fees and costs paid as part of a settlement are covered — while unexpectedly raising and answering a question of first impression about federal jurisdiction over foreign entities, says Lara Langeneckert at Barnes & Thornburg.

• State Farm Rate Hike Portends Intensifying Insurance Crisis

  

  The California Department of Insurance's unprecedented emergency approval of a 17% rate increase for State Farm General Insurance, the first interim rate relief granted before completing full actuarial justification, represents a regulatory watershed and establishes precedent that could fundamentally reshape insurers' response to climate-driven market instability, says Daniel Veroff at Merlin Law Group.

• 3 Corporate Deposition Prep Tips To Counter 'Reptile' Tactics

  

  With plaintiffs counsel’s rising use of reptile strategies that seek to activate jurors' survival instincts, corporate deponents face an increased risk of being lulled into providing testimony that undercuts a key defense or sets up the plaintiff's case strategy at trial, making it important to consider factors like cross-examination and timing, say attorneys at Dentons.

• Indemnity Lessons From Mass. Construction Defect Ruling

  

  The Massachusetts high court's decision in Trustees of Boston University v. CHA, holding that a bespoke contractual indemnity provision means that a construction defect claim is not subject to Massachusetts' statute of repose, should spur design and construction professionals to negotiate limited provisions, says Christopher Sweeney at Conn Kavanaugh.

• Statistics Tools Chart A Path For AI Use In Expert Testimony

  

  To avoid the fate of numerous expert witnesses whose testimony was recently deemed inadmissible by courts, experts relying on artificial intelligence and machine learning should learn from statistical tools’ road to judicial acceptance, say directors at Secretariat.

• Ore. High Court Ruling Widens Construction Defect Coverage

  

  A recent Oregon Supreme Court decision, Twigg v. Admiral Insurance, dispels the myth that a contractor's liability for defective work is uninsurable if pursued as a breach of contract, say attorneys at Stoel Rives.

• Measuring The Impact Of Attorney Gender On Trial Outcomes

  

  Preliminary findings from our recent study on how attorney gender might affect case outcomes support the conclusion that there is little in the way of a clear, universal bias against attorneys of a given gender, say Jill Leibold, Olivia Goodman and Alexa Hiley at IMS Legal Strategies.

• Oft-Forgotten Evidence Rule Can Be Powerful Trial Tool

  

  Rule 608 may be one of the most overlooked provisions in the Federal Rules of Evidence, but as a transformative tool that allows attorneys to attack a witness's character for truthfulness through opinion or reputation testimony, its potential to reshape a case cannot be overstated, says Marian Braccia at Temple University Beasley School of Law.

• Ruling On Pollutants And Indemnity Offers Insurers Mixed Bag

  

  Both insurers and policyholders can reap benefits from a Georgia federal court's recent declaratory judgment decision, which broadly defined pollutants, but also deemed the duty to indemnify not yet ripe for adjudication, says Jena Emory at Morris Manning.

• What Disparate Impact Order Means For Insurers' AI Use

  

  A recent executive order seeking to bar disparate impact theory conveys a meaningful policy shift, but does not alter the legal status of federal antidiscrimination law or enforceability of state laws, such as those holding insurers accountable for using artificial intelligence in a nondiscriminatory matter, say attorneys at Eversheds Sutherland.