The Insurance Law Center cordially invites you to its fall 2013 symposium, THE LAW AND ECONOMICS OF INSURANCE, in the William F. Starr Hall, University of Connecticut School of Law, Hartford, Connecticut on Friday, October 4, 2013 from 8:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Insurance law and insurance economics each have long and distinguished scholarly histories, but participants in the two disciplines have not always communicated well across academic silos. As a result, legal analysis of insurance tends to ignore or simplify the economic implications of doctrinal rules and regulatory approaches. For example, the use of behavioral economics to understand anomalies in insurance demand has generated important insights that legal scholars and regulators are only beginning to assimilate. Meanwhile, economic models of insurance are often too divorced from legal realities and institutional details to offer clear policy guidance. Thus, careful study of different companies’ homeowners insurance policies reveal significant differences among them that present challenges for economic models of competition in insurance markets. In conjunction with the forthcoming publication of Edward Elgar’s Research Handbook on the Law and Economics of Insurance (Daniel Schwarcz and Peter Siegelman, eds.), this symposium aims to encourage more policy-relevant insurance economics scholarship and more economically-sophisticated legal scholarship by promoting conversation across legal and economic disciplines. To this end, the conference brings together leading scholars in insurance law and in insurance economics to discuss issues at the heart of both disciplines. Examples include the role of government in regulating insurance solvency and providing disaster insurance, the role of courts in interpreting insurance policies and regulating their content, and the role of insurance in shaping legal liability. Our hope is that the conference will better equip participants across disciplinary categories to integrate the new insights of insurance economics with the flourishing body of research in insurance law, so that each discipline can recognize and build on the contributions of the other.

8:15 Continental Breakfast

8:45 Welcome To The Law School

9:00 Why And How Do Consumers Purchase Insurance?

Howard C. Kunreuther, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania & Mark V. Pauly, The Wharton School, University of

Pennsylvania: Behavioral Economics & Insurance:Policy, Legislative, and Regulatory Principles and Solutions

Daniel Schwarcz, University of Minnesota Law School & Peter Siegelman, University of Connecticut School of Law:The Law & Economics of

Insurance Intermediaries

Joshua C. Teitelbaum, Georgetown University Law Center: Optimal Design of Insurance Policies

Moderator: Patricia A. McCoy, University of Connecticut School of Law

10:15 Break

10:30 The Role Of The State In Insurance Markets

Kenneth S. Abraham, University of Virginia School of Law & Pierre-Andr  Chiappori, Department of Economics, Columbia

University: Classification Risk and Its Regulation

Scott E. Harrington, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania: U.S. Health Insurance and Health Care Reform

James Kwak, University of Connecticut School of Law: Social Insurance as Insurance

Moderator: John Aloysius Cogan, Jr., University of Connecticut School of Law

11:45 Luncheon

Luncheon Keynote Address

Hon. Thomas B. Leonardi, Insurance Commissioner, State of Connecticut

1:30 Insurance Regulation

Martin Grace, J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University: Economics of State vs. Federal Regulation

Robert W. Klein, J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University & Elizabeth F. Brown, J. Mack Robinson College of Business,

Georgia State University: Insurance Solvency Regulation: Present Structure and Future Promise

Moderator: Peter Kochenburger, University of Connecticut School of Law

2:20 Break

2:35 Courts And Insurance

Tom Baker, University of Pennsylvania Law School & Kyle D. Logue, The University of Michigan Law School:Mandatory and Non-Mandatory

Implied-in-Law Terms in Insurance Contracts

Michelle Boardman, George Mason University School of Law: Interpretation and Construction of Insurance Contracts

Richard Squire, Fordham University School of Law: Duty to Settle

Moderator: Daniel Schwarcz, University of Minnesota Law School

3:45 Conference Conclusion

Continental breakfast and lunch provided to those who register by Monday September 30, 2013. Registration is free. To register, call Patricia

Carbray at 860-570-5184 or write patricia.carbray@uconn.edu. Out-of-town guests may book rooms at the Hartford Downtown Marriott.

Please join the Insurance Law Center at 4 p.m. on Thursday, September 26, 2013, for a workshop by Professor Jenny Steele, an insurance law expert at York Law School at the University of York in the United Kingdom. Professor Steele will present her work titled “The Compatibility of Insurance and Obligations.” Her talk will take place in Blumberg Hall, which is on the second floor of Starr Hall on the Law School campus. A reception honoring Professor Steele and our adjunct insurance law professors will follow immediately afterwards.

The Leverhulme Trust recently awarded Professor Steele a three-year Major Research Fellowship on Liability, Insurance and Society: the Politics and Economy of Private Law. Her forthcoming book with Rob Merkin, titledInsurance and the Law of Obligations, will be published by Oxford University Press.

On June 14, 2013, the Insurance Law Center will host law professors from across the country for the 2013 Junior Scholars Workshop on Financial Services Law. This competition is open to law faculty with less than six years of teaching experience.  The workshop participants may submit papers on any of a wide array of topics, including:

Banking, securities, insurance, and commodities regulation;

Regulatory issues concerning the shadow banking system;

Consumer financial services and the regulation of those services;

Payment systems and other topics of commercial law related to commercial banking;

Legal implications of bank-based versus capital-markets-based systems of finance; and

Systemic financial risk.

Authors whose papers are selected will be invited to discuss their work with each other and senior scholars in the field at this all-day event.

 

 

In this symposium, hosted by the Hartford Chapter of the Professional Liability Underwriting Society (PLUS) and the Insurance Law Center, an expert panel will discuss the state of the legal malpractice insurance market, including:

significant and new decisions affecting attorneys’ practice,

how claims affect pricing along with coverage,

risk management issues,

the impact of new decisions on businesses, and

coverage issues that insurance agents and brokers must consider when recommending legal malpractice products to their clients.

 

Monday, May 20, 2013

1:00 Registration Begins

1:30 – 4:00 p.m. Program

Panelists:

Elizabeth M. Cristofaro, Goldberg Segalla LLP

John Kronholm, Kronholm Insurance Services

Adam Sharaf, AXIS US Insurance

Rhonda Tobin, Robinson & Cole, LLP

Moderator: Jeffrey Neidle, One Beacon Professional Insurance

 

Cover Yourself (and Your Client): Critical Insurance Considerations When Prosecuting or Defending Civil Actions

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

5:45 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

(Cash bar at 5:00 p.m., dinner at 5:45 p.m., program at 6:15 p.m.)

A CLE cosponsored by the Connecticut Bar Association Sections on Insurance Law and Litigation and The Insurance Law Center

Janet M. Blumberg Hall

University of Connecticut School of Law

Hartford, CT

Speakers:

Leonard Isaac, Litigation Section Chair, Isaac Law Offices LLC, Waterbury

Peter Kochenburger, Executive Director, Insurance Law Center, University of Connecticut School of Law, Hartford

Edward P. McCreery III, Pullman & Comley, LLC, Bridgeport

Elizabeth J. Stewart, Murtha Cullina LLP, New Haven

Ryan M. Suerth, Ryan Suerth LLC, Madison

Moderator:

Elizabeth F. Ahlstrand, Seiger Gfeller Laurie LLP, West Hartford

Program Schedule

5:00 Registration and Cash Bar

5:45 Dinner Buffet

6:10 Introduction

6:15 Is Insurance Coverage Available for Certain Causes of Action?

6:45 Ethical Issues for Defense Counsel

7:15 Break

7:25 CUTPA/CUIPA Claims

7:55 Duty to Defend

8:20 Concluding Remarks

This seminar is appropriate for both newly admitted and experienced attorneys.

 

About the Program

1. Is insurance coverage available for certain causes of action? This presentation will include a discussion of intentional vs. negligent conduct,

volitional conduct with unintended consequences, and intentional torts that are nonetheless covered under personal/advertising injury coverage.

2. Ethical issues for defense counsel. This presentation will identify an array of circumstances that pose ethical dilemmas, including the tripartite relationship between insurer, policyholder and underlying defense counsel, the right of the insurance carrier to intervene in the underlying litigation, use of jury interrogatories, use of general vs. special verdict forms, and motions to strike or for summary judgment that obtain dismissal of covered claims but leave the defendant exposed on non-covered claims.

3. CUTPA/CUIPA claims. This presentation will provide an overview of existing law, including recent developments, and potential applications (such as for post-litigation conduct).

4. Duty to defend. This presentation will explore the tensions between the duty to defend and the duty to indemnify, such as why a policyholder’s success in obtaining coverage for defense can be the death knell to underlying plaintiff’s counsel when there is no duty to indemnify.

Seminar Code: IN030713

The last forty years have ushered in a shift from defined benefit to defined contribution plans and with that shift, employers have shed market risk and moved it onto workers. Along with this change come difficult issues, including the ability of middle- and lower-income households to bear that risk, the increased volatility of financial markets, the danger of outliving one’s savings, and senior citizens’ ability to continue managing their portfolios when physical or cognitive problems strike. In this symposium, economists, legal scholars, government officials and market participants will come together to discuss how to better understand the defined contribution paradigm and how its risks should be managed and regulated.

8:15 Breakfast

8:45 Welcome to the Law School

9:00 Perspectives on Challenges in Lifecycle Planning for Retirement

Richard L. Kaplan, Peer and Sarah Pedersen Professor, University of Illinois College of Law

Russell K. Osgood, Visiting Professor, Washington University School of Law, and immediate past President of Grinnell College

Moderator: James Kwak, Associate Professor of Law, University of Connecticut School of Law

10:00 Break

10:15 Employer and Employee Perspectives on Pensions

Kevin Lembo, State Comptroller, State of Connecticut

Dana M. Muir, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Business Law, Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan

Brishen Rogers, Assistant Professor of Law, Beasley School of Law, Temple University

Edward A. Zelinsky, Morris and Annie Trachman Professor of Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law

Moderator: Michael Fischl, Professor of Law, University of Connecticut School of Law

12:00 Luncheon

12:30 Luncheon Keynote Address

Alicia H. Munnell, Peter F. Drucker Professor of Management Sciences at the Carroll School of Management and Director of the Center for

Retirement Research, Boston College

1:30 Problems With Defined Contribution Plans

Zvi Bodie, Norman and Adele Barron Professor of Management, School of Management, Boston University

Lawrence A. Frolik, Distinguished Faculty Scholar and Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh School of Law

David Laibson, Robert I. Goldman Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, Harvard University

Amy Monahan, Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School

Moderator: Patricia A. McCoy, Connecticut Mutual Professor of Law and Director, Insurance Law Center, University of Connecticut School of Law

3:15 Break

3:30 Related Consumer Issues

Mercer E. Bullard, Jessie D. Puckett, Jr., Lecturer and Associate Professor of Law, University of Mississippi School of Law

Megan Thibos, Mortgage Markets Section, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Moderator: Dali Jimnez, Associate Professor of Law, University of Connecticut School of Law

 

On February 7-8, 2013, the Insurance Law Center at the University of Connecticut School of Law will host a symposium titled The Political Economy of Financial Regulation in Washington, in tandem with the Center for Law, Economics and Finance at George Washington University Law School, the Center for Banking and Finance at the University of North Carolina School of Law, and the Institute for Law and Economic Policy.  The conference will bring together legal scholars, regulators, judges, practitioners, economists, political theorists and other social scientists to discuss the role of the political process in financial services regulation and the role of money in both. Keynote speakers will include Nobel prize winner Dr. Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University, Dr. Simon Johnson of MIT, and Professor Michael S. Barr of the University of Michigan.

Attendance is free.

On Monday, January 28, 2013, at 4:00 p.m., Dr. Christian Armbrüster will give a talk on the European Union Solvency II initiative.  Dr. Armbrüster is a noted insurance law expert from Berlin, Germany.  The lecture will take place on the law school campus in Janet M. Blumberg Hall in Hosmer Hall.  A reception will follow and parking is free.  For directions to the law school campus in Hartford, see here.  To RSVP, please email Patricia Carbray at patricia.carbray@uconn.edu.

Dr. Armbrüster will be joining us from the law faculty of the Free University of Berlin, where he holds the title of Chair of Private Law, Company Law, Insurance Law and Conflict of Laws. A well-known authority on insurance law, he is a member of the Insurance Board of the Federal Financial Services Control Authority (BaFin) in Bonn, Germany, as well as of numerous scientific boards and committees in the area of insurance. Dr. Armbrüster received his Ph.D. in Insurance Law in 1994 and his Habilitation in Company Law in 2000 from the Free University of Berlin. Before joining the faculty there in 2004, he was a tenured professor at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg from 2000 to 2003. Since 2007, he has served as a judge on the Berlin Court of Appeal (Kammergericht) in the fields of Commercial and Company Law. Dr. Armbrüster has also served as a legal expert at multiple hearings of the Federal Parliament (Deutscher Bundestag) on various law making initiatives.

 

Conference Schedule

8:40-9:00 Introductory Remarks

Willajeanne F. McLean, University of Connecticut School of Law, Interim Dean & Professor of Law

Patricia A. McCoy, Connecticut Mutual Professor of Law & Director of Insurance Law Center

Sara C. Bronin, Associate Professor of Law, Program Director, Center for Energy & Environmental Law

9:00-9:45 Morning Keynote

Michael B. Gerrard, Sabin Professor of Professional Practice, Director of the Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia Law School

10:00-11:15 Climate Change Litigation and Insurance, from Kivalina to AES v. Steadfast

Moderator

Kurt Strasser, Phillip I. Blumberg Professor of Law

Panelists

Rex Heinke, Partner, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP

William F. Stewart, Partner, Stewart Bernstiel Rebar

Laura A. Foggan, Attorney at Law, Wiley Rein LLP

11:15 – 12:00 Climate Change Science, Foundations and Frontiers

Introduction

Joseph A. MacDougald, Professor in Residence, Executive Director, Center for Energy & Environmental Law

Speaker

Anji Seth, Associate Professor, University of Connecticut School of Law.

12:00-1:30 Luncheon with Keynote Speaker

John H. Fitzpatrick, Secretary General, The Geneva Association

1:30-3:00 Federal International Responses

Moderator

Peter Kochenberger, Executive Director, Insurance Law Center and Associate Clinical Professor of Law

Panelists

Dr. Richard Murray, Special Advisor to the Geneva Association on Liability and Legal Matters

Mr. Butch Bacani, Program Leader, United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative

Fran ois Robert Ewald, Professor of Insurance at the Conservatoire National des Arts et M tiers (Paris) and Director of the Ecole Nationale d’Assurances (Paris)

Mr. David Snyder, Vice President for International Policy, Property Casualty Insurers Association of America

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Professors Mark Weiner and  Stephen Utz will hold a conversation on the approach to health insurance delivery taken in the recent national health care legislation and will review the major constitutional challenges being brought against the law.  Faculty Lounge, April 28 12:00 pm.