What is a crime? Because accidental death policies exclude coverage if death occurs in the course of a commission of a crime, the question can be challenging as a recent decision by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals illustrates. The ruling in Caldwell v Unum Life Insurance Company of America, 2019 WL 4463495 (10th […]
An inadvertent ambiguity in an insurance policy can be costly as Federal Insurance Co. learned in Tyll v. Stanley Black & Decker Life Insurance Program, 2019 WL 3081061 (D. Conn. July 12, 2019). There, the court resolved a motion for summary judgment seeking a determination as to the amount of business travel accident insurance owed […]
Life and accidental death insurance policies can be an important part of an individual’s financial planning to provide security for their families.
Is death resulting from autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong an accident or is coverage under an accidental death insurance policy precluded by the policy’s “self-inflicted injury” exclusion. A recent appellate court ruling overturned a lower court’s determination that the language of the exclusion is ambiguous and therefore had to be resolved in favor of the insured […]
Accidental death and dismemberment insurance frequently present fascinating issues, as illustrated by a recent ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In Dowdy v. Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., 2018 WL 2223722 (9th Cir. May 16, 2018).
Anecdotally, the most litigated accidental death insurance claims involve drunk driving. The next most prevalent type of litigated accidental death claim are cases involving autoerotic asphyxiation. The recent ruling in Tran v. Minnesota Life Ins. Co., 2018 WL 1156326 (N.D. Ill. March 5, 2018) was one such case. The plaintiff was the widow of an […]