It seems that Applied Underwriters’, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway, (NYSE: BRK.A), either never learns or perhaps is desperately recalcitrant in its litigation strategies practices. Not only did it lose …
A California Court of Appeal just handed Applied Underwriters a significant defeat. The case will affect Applied negatively in its numerous battles with California employers formerly enrolled in its EquityComp …
The California Department of Insurance (CDI) took action last spring to keep workers’ comp carriers from enforcing arbitration clauses in side agreements to large deductible workers’ comp policies that had not been approved for use in California. The CDI filed a disciplinary action against Zurich American Insurance Company and Zurich American Insurance Company of Illinois, …
In DMS Services, Inc., et al, Zurich Services Corp, Zurich American Insurance Company and American Zurich Insurance Company, the Court of Appeal for the Second Appellate District a considered commercial janitorial services company’s challenge to a trial court order compelling arbitration of its breach of contract and related claims against the third-party administrator for its …
The exclusive remedy provisions of the California Workers’ Compensation Act don’t trump an arbitration clause in a union contract when the only question is whether an injured worker was terminated for good cause. The decision by the Fourth District Court of Appeal backs up California’s public policy, which supports alternative dispute resolution, such as arbitration, …
The California Supreme Court dealt a blow to all California employers in a Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) age discrimination case when it reversed a court of appeal decision and the original arbitration award that had dismissed the underlying complaint. The court did manage not to accept the former employee’s argument that the arbitration …
Thanks to a ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal the California Insurance Guarantee Association is one step closer to collecting approximately $465 million that is owed to the estate of the failed Superior National Insurance companies. The ruling supports an arbitration award that ordered American International Group’s U.S. Life Insurance Company to make …
Should California’s program for workers’ comp carve-outs—those collectively bargained agreements between employers and unions to settle disputes via arbitration and mediation rather than litigation—be a model for others to emulate? One Silver State assemblyman thinks it should, and those involved in the programs already in operation here certainly do not disagree. California’s carve-out provisions were …