Author: completebodyneeds

Declarations

By Ezra Amacher A federal appeals court this month affirmed the conviction of a former Texas police chief who arranged the destruction of a personal vehicle, falsely reported it stolen, and received insurance proceeds. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a jury could find beyond a reasonable doubt that Christopher Filline, a police chief in Castroville, conspired with a colleague to commit wire fraud. Filline argued the government failed to show there was agreement to a scheme between two parties. In 2016, Filline and his wife were under serious financial stress, facing $30,000 in credit card debt,…

A recent Supreme Court decision that is widely viewed as a significant development in transportation litigation is particularly worth examining in the context of negligent hiring claims against freight brokers. The court’s decision in Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC holds that such claims fall within the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act’s (FAAAA) safety exception and therefore are not preempted, resolving a longstanding circuit split and removing a powerful threshold defense that brokers had increasingly relied upon. For insurance carriers, however, especially those insuring shippers, the more important question to be considered is not what Montgomery says about broker liability…

California homeowners pay 41% below the national average for homeowners insurance, a study from LendingTree shows. LendingTree’s State of Home Insurance: 2026 report, which is based on rates publicly sourced from insurer filings, shows California homeowners paid an average of $1,413 annually for home insurance compared with the national average of $2,395. However, homeowners insurance rates in California have risen 53.7% since 2020, the report shows. Colorado had the largest cumulative increase in home insurance rates, with costs rising 100.8% from 2020 to 2025. That’s more than double the rise in U.S. homeowners insurance rates, which rose a cumulative 46.8%…

A high-ranking Mississippi Insurance Department official was fired in June after allegations that he and his wife diverted more than $90 million from a credit union that is now in receivership. Chad Bridges, director of financial and market regulation at the department since early 2024, was named in a federal lawsuit brought by the National Credit Union Administration, conservator of the troubled Jackson Area Federal Credit Union. The suit charges that Bridges’ wife, Leigh Bridges, who was CEO of the credit union, reaped the benefits of years of fraudulent transfers of funds, money that was used to pay for jewelry,…

The moment a cyber incident hits, the nature of the insurance relationship becomes clear. A policy is only as valuable as the team behind it, and the right claims partner can make an otherwise stressful situation manageable, guiding your client through recovery with speed and expertise. Brokers spend significant time comparing policy features when selecting a cyber insurer. Most policies in stand-alone cyber coverage look similar at a surface level, and price is a poor proxy for quality. What matters most, and what gets the least scrutiny, is claims capability. Here are five capabilities worth examining before you choose an…

My May 2026 column about the enforceability of an exclusionary endorsement that was not listed in a policy’s schedule of endorsements began with this quotation that referenced “endorsements hiding in plain sight”: “Insurance rarely fails loudly. It fails quietly, through definitions, territorial carve-outs, and endorsements hiding in plain sight.” — Yehuda Daniel Katz I begin this month’s column with the same quote because it references policy “definitions…hiding in plain sight.” This is a great quotation because it illustrates that many losses can be denied not by exclusions per se but by other policy provisions that may unexpectedly, under certain circumstances,…

For many property and casualty agents, the realm of employee benefits might seem like a strange and mysterious world outside of their normal business. But what if it could be a way of strategically meeting the clients’ needs and building client relationships in a less traditional way? Agencies that serve businesses already understand their risks. Consider all of the businesses you work with; whether you consider yourself a generalist or specialist, by the time you work with a client for a couple of years, you should have a good working knowledge of the risks that the business faces from a…

Most agency owners will tell you they have a training program. And they genuinely believe it. But when you dig into what that looks like, it’s usually some version of the same thing: a checklist of tasks to complete in the first week, a seasoned employee assigned to answer questions, and an unspoken expectation that the new hire will piece things together over time. That’s not a training program. That’s onboarding by default, and there’s a meaningful difference between the two. The ‘Sit Next to Someone and Learn’ Trap The most common training approach in independent agencies is still shadowing.…

A federal judge ordered the release of $5 million to New York writer E. Jean Carroll in her sexual-abuse lawsuit against Donald Trump, rejecting the president’s request to delay the payout while he asks the Supreme Court to reconsider his appeal. “It is time” for Trump to “pay the judgment,” US District Judge Lewis Kaplan said Wednesday. Kaplan ordered the court clerk to release $5 million plus interest that Trump deposited after the verdict in May 2023, to allow his appeal. Carroll’s lawyer has said the total amount is now $5.77 million. Less than an hour after Kaplan’s ruling, Trump…