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Schedule Registration Housing |
| Friday, January 7, 2000 4:00-5:45 p.m. |
Maryland Suite B
Marriott Wardman Park Hotel Lobby Level |
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Section on Insurance Law |
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| Ellen S. Pryor, Southern Methodist University, Chair | |
| Charles Silver, University of Texas, Program Chair |
| Insurance Class Actions |
| Moderator: | |
| Charles Silver, University of Texas | |
| Speakers: | |
| Lynn A. Baker, University of Texas
John C. Coffee, Jr., Columbia University George Meredith Cohen, University of Virginia Sam Dinkin, Applied Visionary, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York Bruce L. Hay, Harvard Law School Samuel Issacharoff, Columbia University Susan Paris Koniak, Boston University Geoffrey P. Miller, New York University Richard Allen Nagareda, University of Georgia |
| An extraordinary number of class actions have important insurance-related dimensions. Many involve insurance companies or benefit providers directly and charge them with improper conduct, e.g., premium overcharges, unpaid refunds, improper use of after-market and used parts in automobile repairs, or deceptive trade practices. These lawsuits raise issues relating to insurance regulation, e.g., what role should private litigation play in the regulation of insurance companies, and what role should insurance commissioners or other state officials play in insurance class actions that are brought by private litigants? Other class actions involve insurers indirectly. For example, suppose a class contains some persons whose claims fall within the coverage period and other persons whose claims do not. What responsibility does an insurer have to defend or indemnify a policyholder in this situation? Still other class actions force one to think about the intersection between insurance and procedure. This intersection was before the U.S. Supreme Court in Ortiz v. Fibreboard Corporation, 119 S.Ct. 2295 (1999). There, class counsel and the settling defendants argued that a fund created by an insurance settlement satisfied the limited fund prong of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, justifying certification of a mandatory class of all persons occupationally exposed to asbestos, including future claimants. |
| This panel brings together many of the country's leading class action scholars. The speakers will cover the waterfront of issues, including problems that beset class actions in general, e.g., agency failures, and problems that are specific to the insurance context. The presentation will move quickly from the basics to the cutting edge. |