The case is ALPS Prop. & Cas. v. Keller, Reynolds 482 P.3d 638 (Montana, 2021). After purchasing the malpractice insurance policy, the firm sought to tender a malpractice claim to the insurer. Unfortunately for the lawyers, the insurer denied coverage because the law firm knew the basis of the malpractice…
Illinois does not require a lawyer to have insurance. However, the ARDC requests that you inform it each year whether or not you have insurance. My advice to the public is that you should never hire a lawyer who is uninsured. First, if something goes wrong, you have little chance…
ISBA Mutual has won an appeal against a case filed by the McNabola Law Group, P.C., 2019 IL App (1st) 182386. McNabola handled a case for Scot and Patricia Vandenberg against Brunswick. While that jury was deliberating, there was a dispute as to whether McNabola obtained inside information about the…
Plaintiffs, Charles Faber and Karen Faber, filed suit against insurance agencies and related individuals, claiming insurance malpractice. Defendants moved for summary judgment on the basis that Plaintiffs’ claims were barred by the statute of limitations. Plaintiffs responded that the limitation period was tolled because Charles could not reasonably have discovered…
This is a case where an insurance company sued a lawyer to rescind an insurance policy on the basis that the lawyer made material omissions in his application for insurance and in his application to renew his insurance. The lawyer missed the statute of limitations in a personal injury case…
This is a lawsuit between an attorney and his malpractice carrier. The lawyer, Thomas Edwards, handled a personal injury lawsuit on behalf of a commercial diver against the diver’s former employer, Cal Dive. He obtained a multi-million dollar settlement. The victory was short-lived as one year later Cal Dive filed…
This case presents an all too familiar story: a lawyer obtains malpractice insurance but does not realize or understand that the insurance policy contains an exception for any outside business interest. David Marks was the trustee of two trusts that owned a controlling interest in Titan Global Holdings, Inc. Marks…
The plaintiff sued a lawyer for legal malpractice. The lawyer failed to timely report the legal malpractice claim to his carrier and the claim was denied. The plaintiff then sued the insurer directly with no success for the same reason. Because the lawyer failed to report the claim to the…
The case is captioned Illinois State Bar Association Mutual Insurance Company v. Thomas W. Burkhart, et al., 2015 IL App (4th) 140936-U. An attorney, Thomas Burkhart, represented Robert and Elizabeth Wilson in a real estate transaction and related litigation. That litigation ultimately resulted in a jury verdict of $30,000 for…
One common story that I have observed over the years is that legal malpractice insurers frequently deny coverage on the basis that the attorney knew of his own error (or the possibility of a claim) prior to the policy period. The recently decided case, Synergy Law Group, LLC v. Ironshore…