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 [..]
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 [..]
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 [..]
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 [..]
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 [..]
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 [..]
[Edited to include a link to the audio…] I ventured forth into the talk radio world last night, appearing on Nicole Sandler’s Air America talk show to discuss the Problem. Nicole conducted a polite debate between me and ERISA defense attorney Jeff Knapp of the Seattle office of Lane Powell, and I am hoping we [..]
Discovery, the pretrial measures whereby the parties obtain information from each other, is a critical part of the litigation process. Each party gets documents from the other; each gets to take depositions of the other’s witnesses; each can compel the other to answer written questions under oath. As Ninth Circuit Judge Carlos Bea said in [..]
The Washington DC Examiner’s Lobbying Editor, Timothy P. Carney, points out that current proposals for health insurance reform not only fail to reform ERISA, but explicitly preserve its perverse effect. And you might think Democrats would tend to be on the side of the angels here and Republicans would tend to be in the insurance [..]
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 [..]
