The UConn program on November 12 will focus on the liability claims and related insurance issues that are now emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic.  The webinar, which has been organized by ACCC Fellows John Buchanan of Covington & Burling and Rhonda Tobin of Robinson & Cole, is being presented in conjunction with the Insurance Law Center at UConn Law and the Connecticut Bar Association.  The keynote presenter will be Professor Tom Baker, the William Maul Measey Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania and the first Academic Director of UConn’s Insurance Law Center, who will discuss the case law trends that he has observed in the course of developing Penn’s COVID Coverage Litigation Tracker website with Lex Machina.  The program will also feature a presentation on emerging liability claims by Jeffery Vita of Saxe Doernberger & Vita and Jay Sever of Phelps Dunbar, to be followed by a roundtable discussion of liability and insurance issues involving our panelists, members of the Law School community, and members of the Insurance Law Section of the Connecticut Bar Association.  UConn’s Insurance Law Center is the preeminent academic center for insurance law and risk regulation and offers the only Insurance Law LLM program in the country.  Each year the Center organizes conferences and events bringing together leading scholars, lawyers and regulators to discuss and debate the legal and public policy issues surrounding insurance law and regulation.

This webinar is free to all ACCC Fellows as well as their clients, partners and colleagues, and students, staff and faculty at UConn School of Law.

The American Law Institute adopted its Restatement of the Law, Liability Insurance in May 2018 after years of study, debate and controversy. Its journey, however, continues as lawyers and courts consider whether to utilize and perhaps adopt Restatement positions, and opponents continue lobbying state legislatures, regulators and courts to ignore it. This conference will bring together academics and practicing lawyers who have worked on the Restatement to discuss and debate these issues. The Conference continues on Friday, April 12 at Rutgers Law School, Camden New Jersey. Click here for more information.

Panel topics will include the Plain Meaning Rule and the use of extrinsic evidence in coverage disputes, the duty to make reasonable settlement decisions, and insurer liability for actions of appointed defense counsel. Professor Tom Baker, a preeminent scholar in insurance law and one of two ALI Reporters for the Restatement, will lead an interactive lunch session on how the Restatement would apply to a hypothetical claim scenario.

The Conference Agenda is provided below. Please RSVP by April 3rd, 2019. The conference registration fee is $60 for practitioners and other guests, waived for students, faculty and staff.

Agenda

8:00 am: Continental Breakfast

8:45 am: Opening Remarks

9:00 am: The Restatement of Law Liability Insurance: Process and Politics

Professor Jay Feinman (Rutgers Law School)

9: 30 am: Panel 1: Professional Responsibility & the RLLI

Professor Leslie Levin (UConn Law School)

Adjunct Professor Mark Dubois,

Attorney Philip Newbury (Howd & Ludorf)

Moderator: Professor Brendan Maher (UConn Law School)

10:30 am: Break

10:45 am: Panel 2: Plain Meaning and Ambiguity in Insurance Contracts

Attorney Laura Foggan (Crowell & Moring)

Attorney John Buchanan (Covington & Burling)

Attorney Ray DeMeo (Robinson & Cole)

Moderator: Professor Patricia McCoy (Boston College Law School)

12:00 pm: Lunch – Presentation by Professor Tom Baker: Professor Baker will discuss how the RLLI would apply to a hypothetical claim.

1:30 pm: Panel 3: Duty to Make Reasonable Settlement Decisions

Professor Jeff Stempel (UNLV William S. Boyd School of Law)

Attorney Theresa Guertin (Saxe Doernberger & Vita)

Attorney Matthew Shiroma (Day Pitney)

Moderator: Professor Adam Scales (Rutgers Law School)

2:45: Break

3:00: Panel 4: The Restatement in Context

Professor Jill Anderson (UConn Law School)

Professor James Davey (Southampton University Law School, UK)

Professor Qihao He (China University of Political Science and Law)

Commentator: Dean Aviva Abramovsky (University at Buffalo School of Law)

Moderator: Professor Peter Kochenburger (UConn Law School)

4:30 pm Concluding Remarks, followed by

Ice Cream Social – UConn Dairy Bar with cordials

Eligible for Connecticut and New York CLE Credits

On March 13, the University of Connecticut, School of Law, Insurance Law Center, sponsored a debate between two of the nation’s leading insurance scholars on the provocative claim that the current NAIC-centric regulatory regime violates the requirements of many state constitutions. Professor Martin Grace of Temple University supported the current regulatory regime while Professor Daniel Schwarcz of the University of Minnesota argued that it was unconstitutional. Professor Brendan Maher of UConn served as moderator.

The captioned video stream of this debate can be viewed without charge here: Is U.S. Insurance Regulation Unconstitutional? Professor Schwarcz’s article has been published in the most recent volume of the Connecticut Insurance Law Journal (Volume 25, Issue 1) and is also available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=3239966.

On September 16-17, 2019, the UConn Law School and the Insurance Law Center presented a two-day training session on insurance regulation in the U.S. for a delegation from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission. We conducted a similar training program in July 2018, which led the Commission to request this second session, and look forward to more to come. Our presenters included Dean Tim Fisher, numerous Insurance Law adjunct faculty, senior regulators from the Connecticut Department of Insurance, and attorneys from Morgan Lewis.