Florida is now dealing with a second disaster unfolding amidst the pandemic: A wildfire raged out of control in Santa Rosa County late Wednesday in the Panhandle, destroying homes, forcing emergency evacuations and shutting down nine miles of Interstate 10.
In today’s world, data is readily available. In an instant, your smartphone can tell you how many steps you’ve walked today, how many hours you’ve spent on Instagram and how many times you took an Uber last month.
Eight states (Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina) have introduced legislation that would require specified business interruption policies to cover claims for small businesses based on coronavirus for the duration of the public health emergency, even in the face of a specific virus exclusion.
Gov. Mike Parson is signaling his support for a proposal that could shield nursing homes and long-term care facilities from lawsuits linked to the coronavirus response. Under legislation awaiting debate in the Missouri House, health care providers who treat people with COVID-19 would not be liable for civil damages if something were to go wrong.
As we optimistically look forward to at least the beginning of the end of the COVID-19 virus, our industry should start to prepare for the “pandemic of litigation” that will undoubtedly follow.
With the pandemic only now becoming a litigious one as businesses line up to sue insurance companies for not paying out on business interruption claims, it might seem that insurers wouldn’t be impacted financially by the health crisis at this stage. However, as Q1 results start trickling in, it’s becoming evident that some insurers’ first figures for 2020 have been overshadowed by the coronavirus outbreak.
Two forces have emerged that will reshape the workers’ comp system for years to come. The first is the COVID-19 pandemic, which has created sudden and deep shifts to personal health practices and healthcare delivery. To reduce COVID-19’s impact, much of the U.S. population is avoiding public spaces and travel, causing enormous disruption across a range of industries, from airlines to hospitality. This change has ignited a global recession.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is reporting 957,875 cases of COVID-19 as April comes to a close, indicating that for most of the United States, work from home arrangements for those lucky enough to have them will continue for some time.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to unfold and wreak unprecedented havoc on global economies, the idea of a federal pandemic risk insurance program in the US has been put forward, with several sectors voicing their approval.
U.S. traffic deaths fell in 2019 for the third straight year even as overall road use increased, according to preliminary government data released Tuesday.
The effect of COVID-19 on workers compensation could range from $1 billion to $80 billion, according to a National Council on Compensation Insurance study that modeled the potential impacts of the virus.
More than 73% of companies have not yet created a return-to-work strategy, according to a survey of 150 professionals by attorneys at Philadelphia-based law firm Blank Rome LP released Thursday.<br /><br />The survey polled clients that included C-suite executives, in-house counsel and human resources professionals in a wide range of industries from April 18-24, finding that more than a third of companies are relying on their state, local or regional authorities to create their return-to-work strategy, though slightly more than half of respondents said they were in the beginning stages of designing a plan.
The inclusion of pain-management specialists in multi-disciplinary clinics over the last several years in the no-fault claims industry has grown rapidly. Unfortunately, it has also opened the door to fraud.
There is a belief that business closure orders by civil authorities trigger civil authority coverage in business income insurance policies if the orders allege property damage of some kind. This is a misconception that is typical of generalizations about insurance contracts that come from the failure to actually read the policy language.
A class-action lawsuit led by a Monroe County eatery joined a growing number of lawsuits over business closures related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and whether losses from those closures are covered by business interruption insurance.
