AttorneysEd Center

Properly reserving rights, in connection with both property and liability claims, can have a significant impact on an insurance company’s ultimate obligations. In this installment of our series geared especially for insurance companies and their in-house counsel, Gene Weisberg discusses: • methods for analyzing claim issues to determine what rights should be reserved • techniques for writing an effective reservation of rights letter • how to address questions and comments from the policyholder in response to a reservation of rights letter • the consequences of an inadequate letter, and how to avoid those consequences • issues relating to who is entitled to select defense counsel depending on what rights are reserved.

While a lawyer’s actions and communications are generally thought to be privileged, there are some situations where that may not be the case. In this Ethics program, part of our series geared especially for insurance companies and their in-house counsel, Gene Weisberg explores attorney/client and attorney work product privilege issues involving insurance company-employed lawyers, including when lawyers are acting in a claims handling capacity and issues relating to whether pre-litigation and first party fraud investigation are protected.

In this installment of our new series geared especially for insurance companies and their in-house counsel, Gene Weisberg uses case studies to explore analyzing and investigating potentially fraudulent insurance claims. Topics include: • fraud warning signs • investigation tools and methods • evaluation of significant factors such as claims patterns and history • examination under oath and document request techniques • the importance of investigating suspected fraudulent claims thoroughly and objectively, equally exploring leads that prove a claim is valid and those that prove it is not.

The number of companies that are exploring and moving into cloud-based solutions is growing at an exponential rate, even though the industry itself is still immature and growing. As companies explore these options, corporate counsel must consider that under certain circumstances, cloud based solutions may pose substantial risks, as evidenced by recent cloud failures. Corporate counsel must also understand and be able to assess the potential risks and liabilities associated with moving their company’s data and applications to the cloud and under the control of a third party. In this presentation, Matt Karlyn and Aaron Tantleff of Foley & Lardner LLP discuss some of the more significant issues that arise during negotiations with cloud providers and how to effectively negotiate such terms, including: data privacy and security issues, service levels and availability, risk allocation and mitigation, insurance, backup and disaster recovery, and data retention.

Barry Engel covers important developments in the asset protection planning arena, such as new asset protection trust enactments; amendments to current asset protection trust enactments; recent case law involving challenges to trusts and involving settlors charged with contempt of court; developments involving the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) under the HIRE Act; the recently enacted tax treaty between the United States and Switzerland; recent federal tax amnesty program efforts; an update on federal tax developments of relevance, including the 2010 Tax Relief Act; and statutory changes and case law involving domestic and foreign limited liability companies and charging order protection.