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The Rising Judicial Chorus: Judge Young

William G. Young is a judge for the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts; he was a 1986 Reagan appointee and served as chief judge from 1999 to 2005. In 1997 Judge Young issued an opinion in a case called Andrews-Clarke v. Travelers Insurance Company. In a nutshell, Richard Clarke drank too [..]

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ERISA Wants Your Claim to be Denied – Part III

This week we’ve been considering the theory of “efficient breach,” which holds that it’s a fine thing to do to breach a contract so long as everyone comes out even or ahead. A critical aspect of this theory is that the breaching party has to make the other party whole, and if it can incur [..]

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ERISA: 35 years old and still incorrigible

xtremErisa notes that this month marks the 35th anniversary of ERISA’s enactment, and notes some of the good things about ERISA, of which there are a few. The xtremErisa blog is an entertaining read overall, and offers a more balanced view of ERISA’s good and bad points than you will get here (here we are [..]

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ERISA Wants Your Claim to be Denied – Part II

The other day we considered the legal theory of “efficient breach” – the idea that breaching a contract is actually a good thing to do provided doing so is “economically efficient.” It is a bit of an oversimplification, but “economically efficient” essentially means that everyone involved comes out at least as well as they would [..]

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ERISA Wants Your Claim to be Denied – Part I

Breaching a contract seems to most people like a bad thing to do – after all, when you get right down to it a contract involves mutual promises: you pay me this much money, and I’ll do something for you in return. Breaching the contract, then, means breaking a promise. So breaching a contract is [..]

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The Rising Judicial Chorus: Judge Pickering

Charles W. Pickering served as Chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party from 1976 to 1978. In 1990 Bush the Elder appointed him United States District Court Judge for the Southern District of Mississippi. In 2001, Bush the Younger nominated him for a spot on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, but the nomination was blocked [..]

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No surrender!

If you’ve spent any time on this blawg, and you’ve experienced a denied insurance claim subject to ERISA, you may have developed a sense of hopelessness, not to mention frustration and outrage. All, in my opinion, very appropriate reactions. There’s no use soft-peddling the malignant effects of ERISA – it is very arguably the most [..]

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