Recently, the Massachusetts Attorney General announced that Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island (the “Hospital”) agreed to pay $150,000 to settle data breach allegations. In April 2012, the Hospital discovered that it was missing 19 unencrypted back-up tapes from its locations in Providence, Rhode Island and New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Read MoreOn July 24, 2014, the Massachusetts Appeals Court issued an opinion arising out of a subcontractor’s clear-cutting of environmentally-sensitive property in Western Massachusetts. The decision in Pacific Indemnity Company v. Lampro, et al., 86 Mass. App. Ct. 60 (2014), is notable because the court declared, as a matter of law, that the subcontractor’s erroneous actions were not a fortuitous event for which liability insurance was designed but, rather, a normal, foreseeable, and expected incident of doing business.
Read MoreIn Catlin Specialty Ins. Co. v. Am. Superconductor Corp., 12-2314-BLS1 (Mass. Super. Ct. Jan. 29, 2014), Catlin sought a declaration of no coverage based on late notice, among other reasons.
Read MoreMassachusetts health officials announced last week that it will replace its health insurance exchange website. According to media reports, the current website has had difficulty implementing the federal health laws (i.e., Obamacare), because it was designed to comply with state health laws (i.e., Romneycare).
Read MoreWe have been closely following the progress of a Massachusetts bill that would realign the Commonwealth’s reinsurance regulations to make them more consistent with the increasingly global nature of insurance and reinsurance markets.
Read MoreThe U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit earlier this year held that the preclusive effect of a prior arbitration is itself a matter for arbitration as between a reinsurer and its cedent.
Read MoreThe Appeals Court of Massachusetts recently issued a coverage decision captioned Hurley v. Comproni, et al., 85 Mass. App. Ct. 1101, 3 N.E.3d 615 (Mass. App. Ct. 2014) (unpublished) (available here). The decision stemmed from an insured lawyer’s repeated failure to complete service in an underlying personal injury action, resulting in that action being time-barred.
Read MoreThe Massachusetts Appeals Court has upheld a lower-court judgment severely limiting the amount of coverage available to a motor vehicle policyholder, writing that the policyholder’s failure to control who operated the car constituted a misrepresentation that invalidated coverage even in the absence of an intent to deceive.
Read MoreThe Massachusetts Legislature’s Joint Committee on Financial Services is due to report next week on HB 881, An Act Relative to Reinsurance Requirements. Sponsored by Representative Michael Costello of Newburyport, the bill closely tracks the NAIC’s Revised Credit for Reinsurance Model Law, which has already been adopted in eighteen states, including New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire.
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