Top Books for Insurance Underwriter – Casualty Edition:
As casualty underwriters – professionals of all ages must be consummate learners, dedicated to their craft, and looking to utilize historic events to help predict the future. We put together Top books for Insurance underwriters Casualty edition to focus on books to help the future underwriters of the insurance industry understand Tort, Law, Litigation and historic events.
As we know, the next liability crisis will come in a different form than prior – however, there will be leading indicators and ways to predict.
Experimenting with the Consumer: The Mass Testing of Risky Products on the American Public
Experimenting With The Consumer exposes the hazards of the mass-market experimentation in which every American consumer and worker is unwittingly tapped for product risk data by manufacturers, scientists, and regulators. Vioxx, Heparin, Avandia, Paxil, fen-phen, estrogens, silicone implants, pacemakers, formaldehyde in FEMA trailers, 60 buckyballs in coatings … the headlines are increasingly filled with hidden risks coming to light in popular products years after federal agencies approve them for the American public. Shapo shows readers how to get past unreasonable trust or fear and make the best risk-management choices for themselves and their families. He walks them through what questions to ask before consenting to be in a clinical trial; how to evaluate the implied bold-print claims against the small-print disclosures in advertisements for medical products; how to uncover product and environmental risks in their homes, workplaces, supermarkets, and neighborhoods; how to assess and control product risk while maximizing consumer choice and benefit; how to pressure government to tighten consumer protection; and how to seek legal redress.
Through a diverse selection of dramatic case studies, Shapo lays bare the incentives of companies and entrepreneurial scientists to fake or obscure experimental data before and after government approval; the fights between interested and disinterested scientists over data; the fights between scientists and doctors over patient rights; the campaigns of activists against government agencies to release experimental drugs; the impact of the journalistic and promotional media on public knowledge and perception of product risk; and the marketing tricks that manufacturers use to harness sexual desire to product launches and to shape the prescription choices of physicians.
Buy Here: Experimenting with the Consumer: The Mass Testing of Risky Products on the American Public
How Judges Think
A distinguished and experienced appellate court judge, Richard A. Posner offers in this new book a unique and, to orthodox legal thinkers, a startling perspective on how judges and justices decide cases. When conventional legal materials enable judges to ascertain the true facts of a case and apply clear pre-existing legal rules to them, Posner argues, they do so straightforwardly; that is the domain of legalist reasoning. However, in non-routine cases, the conventional materials run out and judges are on their own, navigating uncharted seas with equipment consisting of experience, emotions, and often unconscious beliefs. In doing so, they take on a legislative role, though one that is confined by internal and external constraints, such as professional ethics, opinions of respected colleagues, and limitations imposed by other branches of government on freewheeling judicial discretion. Occasional legislators, judges are motivated by political considerations in a broad and sometimes a narrow sense of that term. In that open area, most American judges are legal pragmatists. Legal pragmatism is forward-looking and policy-based. It focuses on the consequences of a decision in both the short and the long term, rather than on its antecedent logic. Legal pragmatism so understood is really just a form of ordinary practical reasoning, rather than some special kind of legal reasoning.
Supreme Court justices are uniquely free from the constraints on ordinary judges and uniquely tempted to engage in legislative forms of adjudication. More than any other court, the Supreme Court is best understood as a political court.
Buy Here: How Judges Think
A History of American Law: Third Edition
In this brilliant and immensely readable book, Lawrence M. Friedman tells the whole fascinating story of American law from its beginnings in the colonies to the present day. By showing how close the life of the law is to the economic and political life of the country, he makes a complex subject understandable and engrossing. A History of American Law presents the achievements and failures of the American legal system in the context of America’s commercial and working world, family practices, and attitudes toward property, government, crime, and justice.
Now completely revised and updated, this groundbreaking work incorporates new material regarding slavery, criminal justice, and twentieth-century law. For laymen and students alike, this remains the only comprehensive authoritative history of American law.
Buy Here: A History of American Law: Third Edition
Liability: The Legal Revolution and Its Consequences
This controversial book describes the transformation of modern tort law since the 1960s, and shows how the dramatic increase in liability lawsuits has had an adverse effect on the safety, health, the cost of insurance, and individual rights.
Buy Here: Liability: The Legal Revolution and Its Consequences
Exploring Tort Law
Tort law provides individuals or groups redress for wrongful harm to every dimension of life from physical injury to property damage to personal insult. Over the past decades no body of law within the civil justice system has experienced greater ferment than the law of Torts. This edited collection comprises new scholarship from many of today’s most influential contributors to Torts scholarship. Topics include provocative analyses of orginal Tort-type norms; punitive damages; proportional liability; the political-legal dynamics of the Restatement process; landmark modern Torts decisions; the future of collateral source rules relative to various types of insurance; the role of risk information in assignment of seller liability; privity and freedom of contact; the vitality of negligence and duty rules, and optimal rules for vicarious liability. The collection closes with chapters from civil code nation authorities on the European view of causation in toxic harm suits and on collective rights and actions in South America and in Europe.
Buy Here: Exploring Tort Law
Product Liability Entering the Twenty-First Century: The U.S. Perspective
Are liability “crises” an inevitable part of the modern industrial landscape? Does the inherent nature of the insurance industry promote recurring liability crises? What have been the effects of the liability reforms of the 1990s? Should lawyers be given de facto regulatory authority? This report provides perspective on these and other key issues concerning the law and economics of products liability. The authors begins with a brief description of the evolution of products liability doctrine in the U.S., up to the point of the liability crisis of the late 1980s. They discuss the economic implications of product risk for both consumers and producers, offer economic hypothesis on the implications of the increased scope of liability and subsequent reforms, and provide an update of trends in litigation and liability law. The book ends with a discussion of pending legislation and prospects for further improvements. Moore and Viscusi make the point that effective liability policy calls for a balancing of the incentives for improved public safety on one hand, and the benefits of new and existing products on the other.
Buy Here: Product Liability Entering the Twenty-First Century: The U.S. Perspective
The Liability Century: Insurance and Tort Law from the Progressive Era to 9/11
Kenneth Abraham explores the development and interdependency of the tort liability regime and the insurance system in the United States during the twentieth century and beyond, including the events of September 11, 2001.
From its beginning late in the nineteenth century, the availability of liability insurance led to the creation of new forms of liability, heavily influenced expansion of the liabilities that already existed, and continually promoted increases in the amount of money that was awarded in tort suits. A “liability-and-insurance spiral” emerged, in which the availability of liability insurance encouraged the imposition of more liability, and, in turn, the imposition of liability encouraged the further spread of insurance.
Liability insurance was not merely a source of funding for ever-greater amounts of tort liability. Liability insurers came to dominate tort litigation. They defended lawsuits against their policyholders, and they decided which cases to settle, fight, or appeal. The very idea behind insurance––that spreading losses among large numbers of policyholders is desirable––came to influence the ideology of tort law. To serve the aim of loss spreading, liability had to expand.
Today the tort liability and insurance systems constantly interact, and to reform one the role of the other must be fully understood.
Buy Here: The Liability Century: Insurance and Tort Law from the Progressive Era to 9/11
Terrorism, Tort Law and Insurance: A Comparative Survey
The tragic events of September 11th, 2001, have stirred international debate on how to cope with losses that terrorist acts inflict upon individuals and businesses. While tort law offers several possible responses to this question, insurers, funds and ad hoc legislation often step in as well. This volume brings together renowned tort law experts from Austria, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, who examine compensation for victims of terrorism in their respective jurisdictions. Contributions from the U.S. also address procedural problems of mass tort litigation and present the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. Further contributions include a survey of liability insurance issues as well as an economic analysis of possible solutions. The book is concluded by a comparative analysis and an assessment of legal policy issues.
Buy Here: Terrorism, Tort Law and Insurance: A Comparative Survey
The Law of Class Actions and Other Aggregate Litigation
The second edition of this casebook treats the subject of aggregate litigation as a coherent whole. The new authors have preserved the original focus while updating, revising, and enriching the discussions of particular topics. The materials on class actions have been tightened and reorganized, reflecting recent judicial decisions that have made class actions harder to certify; and the materials on other procedural devices, including consolidations and arbitration, have been strengthened. The discussions contain more information about litigation strategies, judicial practices, financial considerations, and empirical findings.
Buy Here: The Law of Class Actions and Other Aggregate Litigation
Preparation of A Product Liability Case
The Preparation of a Product Liability Case offers substantive analysis and practical, expert guidance on analyzing theories of liability, conducting pre-trial discovery and discovery of particular information, introducing crucial evidence, and planning litigation strategies.
You’ll find all the hands-on guidance you need to tackle such essential aspects of the product liability litigation process as:
- Strict liability, including the design defect, manufacturing defect, and marketing defect theories
- Failure to warn
- Breach of warranty
- Admissibility of remedial measures
- Defenses, including alteration of the product, compliance with government standards, and open and obvious defects
- Investigating and preparing a product liability action Helpful practice guides include numerous checklists and sample forms, as well as appendices of interrogatories, sample jury charges, and safety briefs in specific types of cases.
Buy Here: Preparation of A Product Liability Case
Asbestos and Fire: Technological Tradeoffs and the Body at Risk
For much of the industrial era, asbestos was a widely acclaimed benchmark material. During its heyday, it was manufactured into nearly three thousand different products, most of which protected life and property from heat, flame, and electricity. It was used in virtually every industry from hotel keeping to military technology to chemical manufacturing, and was integral to building construction from shacks to skyscrapers in every community across the United States. Beginning in the mid-1960s, however, this once popular mineral began a rapid fall from grace as growing attention to the serious health risks associated with it began to overshadow the protections and benefits it provided.
In this thought-provoking and controversial book, Rachel Maines challenges the recent vilification of asbestos by providing a historical perspective on Americans’ changing perceptions about risk. She suggests that the very success of asbestos and other fire-prevention technologies in containing deadly blazes has led to a sort of historical amnesia about the very risks they were supposed to reduce.
Asbestos and Fire is not only the most thoroughly researched and balanced look at the history of asbestos, it is also an important contribution to a larger debate that considers how the risks of technological solutions should be evaluated. As technology offers us ever-increasing opportunities to protect and prevent, Maines urges that learning to accept and effectively address the unintended consequences of technological innovations is a growing part of our collective responsibility.
Buy Here: Asbestos and Fire: Technological Tradeoffs and the Body at Risk
The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America
From agriculture to big business, from medicine to politics, The Cigarette Century is the definitive account of how smoking cameH to be so deeply implicated in our culture, science, policy, and law. No product has been so heavily promoted or has become so deeply entrenched in American consciousness. The Cigarette Century shows in striking detail how one ephemeral (and largely useless) product came to play such a dominant role in so many aspects of our lives—and deaths.
Buy Here: The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America
Defending the Indefensible: The Global Asbestos Industry and its Fight for Survival
In the early twentieth century, asbestos had a reputation as a lifesaver. In 1960, however, it became known that even relatively brief exposure to asbestos can cause mesothelioma, a virulent and lethal cancer.
Yet the bulk of the world’s asbestos was mined after 1960. Asbestos usage in many countries continued unabated.
This is the first global history of how the asbestos industry and its allies in government, insurance, and medicine defended the product throughout the twentieth century. It explains how mining and manufacture could continue despite overwhelming medical evidence as to the risks. The argument advanced in this book is that asbestos has proved so enduring because the industry was able to mount a successful defense strategy for the mineral–a strategy that still operates in some parts of the world. This defence involved the shaping of the public debate by censoring, and sometimes corrupting, scientific research, nurturing scientific uncertainty, and using allies in government, insurance, and medicine.
The book also discusses the problems of asbestos in the environment, compensating victims, and the continued use of asbestos in the developing world. Its global focus shows how asbestos can be seen as a model for many occupational diseases–indeed for a whole range of hazards produced by industrial societies. The book is based on a wealth of documentary material gained from legal discovery, supplemented by evidence from the authors’ visits and researches in the US, the UK, Canada, Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe, Australia, Swaziland, and South Africa.
Buy Here: Defending the Indefensible: The Global Asbestos Industry and its Fight for Survival
Labor’s Home Front: The American Federation of Labor during World War II
One of the oldest, strongest, and largest labor organizations in the U.S., the American Federation of Labor (AFL) had 4 million members in over 20,000 union locals during World War II. The AFL played a key role in wartime production and was a major actor in the contentious relationship between the state, organized labor, and the working class in the 1940s. The war years are pivotal in the history of American labor, but books on the AFL’s experiences are scant, with far more on the radical Congress of Industrial Unions (CIO).
Andrew E. Kersten closes this gap with Labor’s Home Front, challenging us to reconsider the AFL and its influence on twentieth-century history. Kersten details the union’s contributions to wartime labor relations, its opposition to the open shop movement, divided support for fair employment and equity for women and African American workers, its constant battles with the CIO, and its significant efforts to reshape American society, economics, and politics after the war. Throughout, Kersten frames his narrative with an original, central theme: that despite its conservative nature, the AFL was dramatically transformed during World War II, becoming a more powerful progressive force that pushed for liberal change.
Buy Here: Labor’s Home Front: The American Federation of Labor during World War II
The Rule of Lawyers: How the New Litigation Elite Threatens America’s Rule of Law
Big-ticket litigation is becoming a way of life in this country. But something new is afoot-something typified by the $246 billion tobacco settlement, and by other courtroom assaults against companies producing guns, cars, breast implants, asbestos, lead paint, and more. Each massive class-action suit seeks to invent new law, to ban, tax, or regulate something that elected lawmakers had chosen to leave alone. And each time the new attack process works as intended, the new litigation elite reaps billions in fees-which they invest in fresh rounds of suits, as well as political contributions.
The Rule of Lawyers asks: Who picks these lawyers, and who can fire them? Who protects the public’s interest when settlements are negotiated behind closed doors? Where are our elected lawmakers in all this? The answers may determine whether we slip from the rule of law to the rule of lawyers.
Buy Here: The Rule of Lawyers: How the New Litigation Elite Threatens America’s Rule of Law
Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America
From Barack Obama (Harvard and Chicago) to Bill and Hillary Clinton (Yale), many of our current national leaders emerged from the rarefied air of the nation’s top law schools. The ideas taught there in one generation often shape national policy in the next.
The trouble is, Walter Olson reveals in Schools for Misrule, our elite law schools keep churning out ideas that are catastrophically bad for America. From class action lawsuits that promote the right to sue anyone over anything, to court orders mandating the mass release of prison inmates; from the movement for slavery reparations, to court takeovers of school funding—all of these appalling ideas were hatched in legal academia. And the worst is yet to come. A fast-rising movement in law schools demands that sovereignty over U.S. legal disputes be handed over to international law and transnational courts.
It is not by coincidence, Olson argues, that these bad ideas all tend to confer more power on the law schools’ own graduates. In the overlawyered society that results, they are the ones who become the real rulers.
Buy Here: Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America
Commercial Liability Risk Management and Insurance
The standard text book for the AICPCU designation. Commercial General liability, commercial auto, workers compensation, management liability, professional liability, environmental, marine and aviation, and excess liability, & cyber liability are all topics covered.
Buy Here: Commercial Liability Risk Management and Insurance
