Last week, Bear Stearns & Co. announced that it has hired a law firm to investigate losses incurred by two of its hedge funds.  The hedge funds were forced into bankruptcy after losing significant amounts of money from investments in the subprime mortgage market.  The stock market is currently reeling over credit problems stemming from the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage industry. 

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Read More Bear Stearns Hires Law Firm To Investigate Ailing Hedge Fund Investments While Goldman Sachs Hedge Fund Receives $3 Billion Bailout

Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. and Bancorp Services LLC are back in the ring again.  Bancorp has filed a complaint alleging that MetLife is infringing a patent for a system that administers and tracks the values of insurance policies in separate accounts (U.S. Patent No. 7,249,037). 

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Read More Met Life and Bancorp Fight Over Insurance-Related Patents

A Massachusetts trial court recently ruled on a number of issues concerning an insurer’s duties where it agrees to defend an insured under a reservation of rights, including:  (1) an insurer’s duty to defend an affiliated company that owns all of the insured’s shares when only the affiliated company and not the insured is named as a defendant in the lawsuit; (2) an insurer’s duty to pay defense costs for legal work that benefits both the insured and non-insured entities working together as part of a joint defense agreement; (3) an insurer’s duty to pay defense costs for both national and local counsel retained by an insured; and (4) the reasonableness of legal fees incurred when the defense is provided under a reservation of rights. 

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Read More Massachusetts Court Weighs In On Duty To Defend Issues

The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (the “OIR”) has denied rate filings of three insurance companies, because, according to the OIR, the requested rate decreases were not substantial enough to be in accordance with the legislative overhaul from the January Special Session. 

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Read More Florida Office Of Insurance Regulation Denies Three Rate Filings As “Too High”

In a recent decision, a Florida appellate court found that an insured was not entitled to statutory legal fees against its insurer where the insurer defended the insured under a reservation of rights before bringing a declaratory judgment action concerning coverage. 

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Read More Statutory Attorneys Fees Under Florida’s Insurance Code

In an 8-2 en banc ruling, the D.C. Court of Appeals has held that terminally ill patients do not have a constitutional due process right to access experimental drugs. 

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Read More D.C. Circuit : No Constitutional Right For Terminal Patients To Receive Experimental Drugs

Food manufacturing giant ConAgra is facing a flood of products liability lawsuits stemming from the company’s February 2007 recall of Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter products due to salmonella contamination. 

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Read More Peanut Butter Litigation Woes Mount For ConAgra

The Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana recently held that state failure-to-warn claims are not preempted by the labeling requirements of the Food and Drug Administration. 

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Read More Federal District Court Rules That FDA Regulations Do Not Preempt State Law Claims, Allows State Failure To Warn Claims Against Pharmaceutical Company To Proceed