News & Resources

We are finishing up our series of posts to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic. There is something about the disaster, something that has particularly captured the imagination for the past century. For us, of course, it’s a great story about insurance coverage and claim payments. But for others, it is the folly of believing the ship to be unsinkable; or it is the appalling loss of life, or the fact that so many famous people were on the ship; or it is the sheer luxury of the ship that passengers enjoyed for a few short days. Titanic has become a metaphor for just about everything: hubris, glamour, human error and class differences.

The history of insurance is remarkably interesting. While gambling on risk dates back to ancient civilizations, most insurance wonks consider the introduction of “modern” insurance to date to the late 17th Century at Lloyd’s coffee house. Of course, if you ask some Florida homeowners, not much has changed in the last 300 years: It can still take months or years for an insurance company to pay a claim.

John Jacob Astor, Isidor Straus, Benjamin Guggenheim: These men were just three of the millionaires lost on Titanic. Their estates were worth millions — Straus, $4.4 million; Guggenheim, $3.5 million; Astor, untold millions, considering he left trusts for his unborn son of $3 million and his widow of $5 million. Their wealth was enough that their families may not have worried about their life insurance policies paying out quickly, or at all.

When the Costa Concordia foundered in January, insurance industry insiders thought the cruise line’s Florida-based parent company would avoid insurance and legal liability. It seemed that, with their ticket purchase, passengers agreed to pursue legal actions through the Italian courts. The venue for insurance claim disputes has been a source of contention.

There are all sorts of laws that apply to parades, demonstrations and marches. Generally, if a group wants to use city streets, the city must first give them permission. Before they grant permission, though, city governments ask for certain reassurances from the organizers. Key among those is that the sponsoring organization has liability insurance to cover the event.

We are finishing up our foray into the magic of movies and their multiple perils. According to movie and insurance industry professionals, few insurance companies provide all the different policies a production would need. It apparently takes a cast of thousands of risk managers to determine what kinds of coverage and what limits are appropriate for any given movie.

Sometimes it feels as if movie credits are longer than the movie. The cast, the best boy, the star’s hairdresser, the director’s assistant, the songs and their performers, all the locations — it is a little overwhelming, and most people walk out well before the last credit rolls.

The awards season is over, and trailers for summer blockbusters are beginning to show up in theaters and on television. This is the time of year when moviegoers lay bets on how many explosions they will see during the previews. The closer we are to Memorial Day, the more destructive the movies seem to be.

Florida has seen its share of disputes over Holocaust-era life insurance claims. The cases stemmed from sales of life insurance policies to individuals of certain ethnic groups — Jews, for the most part — who subsequently died at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. When surviving family members contacted them, though, the insurance companies denied the claims.

Yesterday we discussed legislation involving auto insurance reform. Some lawmakers want to reform Florida’s no-fault auto insurance law in order to protect insurance companies from bad faith insurance litigation. There is still much debate on whether reform is needed and what form any legislation should take. It is also unclear whether any of the proposed bills would eliminate the need for auto insurance litigation, which is necessary for many policyholders to enforce their rights against unscrupulous insurance companies seeking to cut costs.