It may not have happened in Florida, but it could have happened in the movies. A 51-year-old man has filed a lawsuit against an insurance company, claiming that the insurer has failed to pay the death benefit it owes him. The deceased was the man’s traveling companion in August 2011. He is a “person of interest” in her disappearance.
The explosion of a container of oven cleaner blinded a man seven years ago and he permanently lost sight in both of his eyes. However, the trauma of losing his sense of sight did not deter the injury victim from pursuing his claim to insurance benefits.
The Economic Policy subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee held a hearing on May 9 to examine some of the issues in the area of flood insurance. With the National Flood Insurance Program currently scheduled to expire before June, some committee members called on their fellow legislators to take prompt action both to reform the program and to reauthorize it for the long haul. The program has provided important benefits and safeguards against property damage to homes in Florida and elsewhere in the country.
If you watch television at all, you have probably seen one of the ads for cars with the self-parking feature. The insurance industry has been strangely quiet on the subject of automated features like parallel parking. It will be interesting to see if insurers, auto manufacturers and the courts draw a new line between personal and product liability.
A bill quietly made it through the Florida Legislature this session that poses some tricky questions for the insurance industry. Surprisingly, it is not related to property insurance or personal injury protection coverage, the two “hot button” insurance issues in the state. Rather, the new law deals with autonomous, or driverless, motor vehicles, and our question is this: If the car drives itself, is an auto insurance company obligated to defend the policyholder from a third-party lawsuit?
We are finishing up our discussion of what insurers and the cruise industry have learned since the Titanic went down 100 years ago. Both Titanic and the more recent Costa Concordia disaster are great illustrations of how companies set priorities. Most of this has been in the context of third-party insurance coverage, the kind of coverage companies buy to help pay for damages or injuries suffered by someone on their property.
We are continuing our discussion of the Titanic, the Costa Concordia and other maritime accidents and what effect, if any, the disasters have had on the insurance and shipping industries. The Costa Concordia could very well cost more than the Exxon Valdez debacle. That doesn’t just include the damage to the ship, of course; if the crew or the cruise line is found to be at fault, the insurance company would have to pay any judgments awarded to passengers or their families.
Within days of any natural or man-made disaster, the insurance industry will start to estimate the cost of the damage. If a hurricane were to hit South Florida during the 2012 season, chances are good that within hours a headline would blare the news: “Hurricane Rocco damage could reach $2 gazillion,” or something to that effect. For the cynics out there, the headlines are just one way for property insurance companies to justify rate increases in the coming year.
In the century since the Titanic sank, how much do you think has changed in the passenger cruise industry? Certainly safety measures improved — every ship has lifeboats enough for everyone on board. Still, the Costa Concordia accident gives one pause: Perhaps it’s been so long since a cruise ship went down that we have all been lulled into a false sense of security. As regulators and law enforcement scrutinize the problems with the Concordia and its Florida-based parent company, insurance companies are reevaluating their risk calculations.
The parent company of the Costa Concordia announced recently that a Florida company would be handling the salvage of the ship. A different contractor removed the stricken ship’s fuel in March, warding off an environmental disaster in the process. And a major insurance company reported that it, too, avoided disaster: The company took a hit from the Costa Concordia, but it still made a profit — there still may be customer claims and lawsuits, though, especially for the families of the 32 people who died.
