Commentary on insurance and reinsurance disputes and related issues and the website of Schiffer Law & Consulting PLLC
Reinsurance information, be it reinsurance contracts, communications with ceding insurers and their reinsurers, broker communications or other related information, is frequently sought in coverage and personal injury litigation. In my latest IRMI.com Expert Commentary on Reinsurance I explore this issue once again, updating an earlier commentary. You can read the article on IRMI.com after registering for access, here.
Parties routinely seek reinsurance information in insurance coverage cases and the courts routinely allow those requests to go forward. Yes, each case is different and each request is different and the reinsurance information may be different as well so drawing a general conclusion is fraught with danger. Nevertheless, two recent cases continue the trend of requiring production of reinsurance information.
Continue reading “Courts Continue to Order Production of Reinsurance Information”
The issue of whether an arbitration award can be vacated based on bias or prejudice because of an alleged non-disclosure by the arbitrator has long plagued commercial arbitration. Many arbitration codes and organizations promote robust and fulsome disclosures by arbitrators, yet there are always occasions where the losing party claims that the arbitrator was biased or prejudiced and that the alleged nondisclosure was at the root of the problem.
The courts, however, have found that to vacate an award, there has to be a showing of actual bias or prejudice that affects the award. The courts have also found that while more forthcoming disclosure should have occurred, the alleged nondisclosure, by itself, is often not close enough to support vacatur of the award.
In a recent case, this scenario played out again in the context of a property appraisal under an insurance policy.
Continue reading “Arbitrator Disclosure and Vacating Awards”
In my last blog post I discussed a Ninth Circuit case on repeat appointments by arbitrators and the issue of evident partiality. In this blog post I briefly discuss an English Supreme Court judgment on multiple appointments of an arbitrator, the duty to disclose and the rules of bias under English law.
Continue reading “The English View: Arbitrator Appointments, Disclosures and Bias”
