Description:

INSURANCE IN MEDIATION (How mediators can keep liability insurance company priorities from derailing settlement). Practical insight and discussion of the laws driving liability insurance company approaches to settlement including Medicare Secondary Payer Act (“set asides”), consumer notice requirements, authority, Sarbanes-Oxley, and more that can and do derail settlement of employment, malpractice (legal, accountant, architects & engineers, and medical), personal injury, property damage (including construction defect), and even business disputes. Most mediators who have worked on disputes involving insurance companies know about the concept of “bad faith” and most know that California has regulations governing claim handling, what many mediators do not know is that there are other State and Federal laws that influence how insurers handle claims, the details of which are often not known even to the insurance representative attending mediation. This interactive session will provide attendees with an overview of the laws that underlie how and why insurance companies behave and respond as they do in mediation, include discussion of when and how to obtain information necessary to prevent settlement derailment, and explore how to introduce and address the issues if they do exist.n
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Rachel Ehrlich is a national mediator who specializes in resolving complexlitigated disputes. She has particular expertise in insurance coverage and bad faith cases and matters in which insurance is a complicating factor. Prior to becoming a mediator, she spent more than 20 years gaining a nuanced understanding of civil disputes and the insurance industry as a casualty and coverage attorney, insurance claims person, underwriter, and executive. She has managed and effected the resolution of tens of thousands of insurance cases, brought in every state in the country. She is a graduate of University of California, Hastings College of the Law (J.D. 1996) and the University of California at Santa Cruz (B.A. Politics 1990). She is admitted to practice before the US Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court, the US Courts of Appeal for the Ninth and Tenth Circuits, and the US District Courts of Northern California and Colorado.