Insured Contracts: When the Carrier Gets It Wrong
Insured Contract Coverage, Excess Judgments, and Extra-Contractual Exposure The first two installments in this series were about coverage that exists. Part One located the insured contract provision in the Commercial General Liability (“CGL”), commercial…
Process Is Proof: Claims-Handling Discovery in Missouri First-Party UM/UIM Cases
Why the insurer’s “we just valued it differently” defense rarely survives a record built piece by piece. The most effective tactic the defense has in a first-party uninsured or underinsured motorist (UM/UIM) case is not about the wreck or the medicine.…
Inside the Insured Contract
Indemnification, Assumption of Liability, and What Actually Triggers Coverage Part One introduced the insured contract provision identifying it in the three liability forms most often standing behind a commercial defendant — the Commercial General…
The Insured Contract Provision
An Overlooked Path to Coverage for Parties Who Are Neither Named Insureds Nor Additional Insureds When a plaintiff’s attorney evaluates available coverage in a serious injury or wrongful death case, the instinct is to identify the tortfeasor, locate the…
When the Carrier Breaches First: Answering Cooperation and Consent Defenses
The insured’s refusal to accept a belated defense is not non-cooperation — it is the privileged consequence of the insurer’s first material breach. Introduction A litany of denials and affirmative defenses commonly follows the filing of an insurance…
Personal Counsel for the Defended Policyholder
When coverage is intact and the insurer is defending, the insured still has interests no one in the defense triangle is positioned to protect. Introduction Much of the writing on personal or independent counsel for an insured assumes a coverage fight:…
Five Misconceptions About Missouri Insurance Law That Cost Practitioners Cases
Introduction Insurance coverage litigation in Missouri is governed by a body of statutory and common law that is, in its broad outlines, familiar to most civil practitioners. The duty to defend, the duty to indemnify, the vexatious refusal statute, the…
An Insurance Agent’s Role:
Agency, Authority, and the Duty to Transmit Premiums Under Missouri Law Key Takeaways I. Introduction When a Missouri consumer walks into an office with an insurance company’s name on the door, hands over a premium check, and walks out expecting…
Advanced Prompt Engineering for Insurance Lawyers
Building Comprehensive Legal Context and Using AI as Devil’s Advocate in Bad Faith Analysis Effective AI-assisted legal analysis requires more than asking good questions—it demands building comprehensive legal context and using AI as an adversarial…
The Eight Corners Rule Plus in Missouri: When the Duty to Defend Arises
How Missouri courts determine whether an insurer must defend its insured — the comparison test, the three-part Allen v. Bryers standard, the low threshold for triggering the duty, and the consequences of a wrongful refusal Missouri Injury & Insurance…