Rerun: Seeing Fireworks

​An article ​posted on PropertyCasualty360.com today features the headline Firework injuries have skyrocketed since 2012. With that report in mind, along with the annual Independence Day celebration around the corner, I thought it might be a good time to rerun a blog post I made on July 5, 2012. I hope you enjoy and celebrate the holiday safely. -- TDIt's the day after the Fourth of July, but that doesn't mean the celebrations are over. Really, having the holiday on a Wednesday just enables the party to last through the weekend. Independence Day means all the traditional American rituals -- baseball, hot dogs, apple pie ...…

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Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Insurance

Ketanji Brown Jackson today took the oaths of office to become the newest associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. She succeeds Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, for whom she once served as a clerk. I always find it interesting, when a Supreme Court justice enters or exits (Scalia, Ginsburg) the stage, to investigate how they have ruled on cases that might be of concern to insurance carriers, agents or brokers. Presidents tend to pluck jurists from the federal courts when they nominate Supreme Court justices. Insurance, however, is regulated primarily at the state government level. For that reason, I don't often find a lot when…

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Can An Insurance Company Retroactively Charge For a Young Driver?

​Photo: "new Teen driver girl" by Carissa Rogers. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license.Question from a member: On a personal auto application for one of our carriers requests information on all residents in the household, including young children. This insured was written in November, 2002 in our office listing the husband, wife and two children. In June, 2008, one child became a licensed operator; they did not call to inform our agency. The carrier did not add this child or send out any type of questionnaire, but knew this child's name and date of birth from the original application. The policy renewed in November,…

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