Ask Tim

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…

​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,…

​Any agency that sells commercial liability insurance (that is, pretty much all of you) gets requests from its clients to name some person or organization as an additional insured. I've said it before and I'll say it again - America used to be a country where everyone dreamed of being rich; now it's a country where everyone dreams of being an additional insured.When someone is an additional insured on a liability insurance policy, the insurance carrier is assuming some of their loss exposures. Consequently, underwriters rightly want to know why they should provide coverage for these parties. To make it easier for you to give them…