Life Insurance

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One challenge defendants and their counsel face early in defending a putative class action filed in state court, assuming they would prefer to litigate in federal court, is how to show that the $5 million amount in controversy requirement is satisfied.  This must be done quickly so that the removal can be timely filed within…

In seeking to certify multistate and nationwide class actions against insurance companies, plaintiffs’ attorneys often argue that the law of breach of contract is essentially the same nationwide, and therefore class certification is proper.  This argument has some appeal to some judges, at least at first blush.  As I think back to my contracts class…

The California Court of Appeal recently affirmed a denial of class certification in Fairbanks v. Farmers New World Life Insurance Company.  The plaintiffs alleged that Farmers violated the California Unfair Competition Law in connection with its marketing and sales of universal life and flexible universal life policies.  The central claim was that Farmers designed…

I previously posted about new class actions against life insurance companies alleging that they should be required to determine whether their insureds have died where no claim for policy proceeds has been made, through searching the “Death Master File” of the Social Security Administration.  I raised a number of issues about the viability of these…

I’ve previously posted regarding class actions against life insurers involving the use of “checkbook” accounts to pay policy proceeds, including posts about the denial of a motion to dismiss in a case against Prudential in Massachusetts federal court and the denial of a motion to dismiss in a case against MetLife in Nevada federal court…

Any insurer that issues payments by making “checkbooks” available to insureds should pay careful attention to a new trend of class actions.  I’ve posted a couple of times on the growing trend of class actions against life insurance companies involving the use of “checkbooks” to pay policy proceeds to beneficiaries (see my posts from May…

A recent posting on Robert Berg’s Class Action Blog suggests that life insurance companies are “secretly profiting” by providing beneficiaries with a checkbook from which they can draw on the proceeds over time, instead of paying a lump sum.  Of course, unless there is some unusual provision in the life insurance policy to the contrary, the beneficiary…