Judges - Snippets

  • Judge DeShelter suggested the areas where the life insurance industry was most vulnerable to attack from consumer advocates were:

    • (1) misrepresentation of product (basically advertising and sales presentations);

    • (2) inability to find a legitimate basis of cost comparison; and

    • (3) failure to bring pressures to bear in controlling medical costs.

1972 01 - SOA - Consumerism in Cincinnati, by Thomas Mitchell, The Actuary, act-1972-vol06-iss01-mitchell - Society of  Actuaries - 3p

  • 2013 0905 - LC - Johnston & Johnston v. Conseco - 5th Circuit Court of Appeals - 13-30010 - Oral Argument - mp3  ---  [BonkNote]  ---  [link-mp3-audio]

    • 20 - Judge Carl Stewart - usually the Policy Due Date is not a mystery.  The amount of the premium.  What did the parties bargain for….drain cash surrender policy… what was the point of the buying the policy…. You just have a piece of paper…..

    • 40 - Judge Carolyn King: My Father said: Don't ever buy a Flexible Premium policy, he was right on the money.

  • THE COURT: But they clearly describe those types of charges as non-guaranteed.

  • MARTENS: Well, the question isn't whether they're non-guaranteed.

    • The question is whether or not they meet the statutory definition of non-guaranteed elements.

    • In other words, non-guaranteed elements is a term of art in the statute.

      • So the question, is it a premium, benefit, value, credit, or charge?  (p30)

2017 1211 - LC - Walker v Life Insurance Company of the Southwest - DOC 876 - Transcript for proceedings - 61p

  • [Re: State Guaranty Funds]

  • 2021 1008 - In Re: Penn Treaty Network America - No. 1 PEN 2009 - Insurance Company in Liquidation Liquidator's Brief in Support of Exceptions - 456p

    • 2015 0511 - Proceedings Taken May 11, 2015

    • THE COURT, Mary Hannah Leavitt: What's going to happen when the guarantee associations take over these policies is that their policyholders, who had nothing to do with this insolvency, are going to make up the difference.

      • Guarantee associations get their money from insurance companies.

        • Insurance companies get their money from their policyholders; so you are shifting the burden from one set of policyholders to another.

      • That's a policy decision that's been made by the legislature, but I think there are problems with holding it up as a model of equity and fairness.

        • In a global sense I don't think it is very fair; but it doesn't matter because we are not here to talk about the wisdom of the legislature.

      • We are really here to decide what the legislature has decided we must do in this circumstance.  

    • MS. GLAWE: Exactly right.

      • That burden shifting is what the legislature and 52 jurisdictions have decided.

    • THE COURT: That's right.

    • MS. GLAWE: So that --

    • THE COURT: I wouldn't hold it up as a wonderful thing.

      • That's all I'm saying.

      • For every upside there's a downside on someone.

  • 2025 0918 - ThinkAdvisor - PacLife settles with Washington state plaintiffs in IUL illustration suit, by John Hilton - [link]

    • Judge Pennell accepted Duvall as an expert witness on general IUL matters and even specifics on the PacLife product. But she drew the line at allowing actuarial opinions.

      • "Duval is not an actuary, and appears to lack the necessary experience, education, or training to opine as to actuarial matters," Pennell wrote in a Sept 9 decision. "Duval opines extensively on how realistic the PDX policy's projected returns were, an opinion which requires actuarial analysis."

  • Justice Holmes once declared "that all contracts are formal, that the making of a contract depends not on the agreement of two minds in one intention, but on the agreement of two sets of external signs-not on the parties' having meant the same thing but on their having said the same thing."

    • Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Path of the Law, 110 Harv. L. Rev. 991, 996 (1997) (reprint of address given at Boston University School of Law on January 8, 1897). 

ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/201187.P.pdf - Rowlands v  - UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT