In Michael Lewis’ new book The Undoing Project (Norton, 352 pp., **** out of four stars), he describes the Nobel Prize-winning, behavioral-finance theory that Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky created in the 1970s as “a truck packed with psychology that might be driven into the inner sanctums of economics and exploded.”
While Kahneman and Tversky were more genius than intellectual terrorist, their groundbreaking studies on how our minds trick us into making bad judgments...
Lawyers engaged actively in a personal injury trial practice are aware that the “recovery of medical or healthcare expenses incurred is limited to the amount actually paid or incurred by or on behalf of the claimant.” Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code Ann. § 41.0105 (2015) (emphasis added). The statute shows an intent by the legislature to limit the recovery of medical or healthcare expenses to a “‘smaller circle’ of expenses incurred after an adjustment of the healthcare provider’s bill.”...
In a new white paper, Lockton assesses the risks Buddy the Elf encounters in his new environment and at the North Pole.
According to Lockton’s analysis of the movie “Elf” (2003), there are many lines of insurance that could come into play should a claim be filed.
Auto
In the movie, Buddy played by Will Farrell, is hit by a taxi while crossing the street. According to Lockton, he could have filed an auto liability claim had he been injured. The insurer couldn’t speculate as to whether...
An arbitration award that found no "meeting of the minds" and contract cancellation as to unperformed contract obligations was vacated by a federal district court for the Northern District of Texas on "exceeded powers" ground of 9 U.S.C. §20(a)(4). The Fifth Circuit reversed the trial court and instructed the court to confirm the award.
The Fifth Circuit noted that if OMG did not believe the arbitrator had the authority to decide the meeting of the minds and contract formation issues, it should...
From Lexis Nexis:
It would probably have been sensible to write a piece about agreeing arrangements for the festive season in September, or maybe even August. Deciding then how children divide their time when they are off school and celebrations for Christmas or Hanukah, builds in enough time to apply to the court to resolve matters if all else fails. In reality, things do not pan out in that way, and it is in November that people's thoughts start to turn to the practicalities of how to divide the holidays...
This paper presents findings from an ongoing project that has analysed over 225 million annual online conflict-related search queries to better understand the scope and scale of conflict in America. The frequency, location, sentimentality and timing of 52,203 unique conflict search terms were monitored for every US county. Analysis has revealed the public’s collective interests and conflict intensities within 225 distinct conflict contexts, many of which have cyclical trends that can inform resource...
One of the issues currently exercising a number of jurisdictions is whether there should be greater regulation of the TPF industry to mitigate risk of abuse.
Some, like in England, favour self-regulation where funders subscribe to a voluntary code of conduct setting out capital adequacy requirements, ethical matters, limitation on the withdrawal of funding and what happens in the event of disagreement etc. A particularly important question is the funder’s level of control and ability to influence...
The legal industry gets smart about artificial intelligence.
In my top 10 list last year, I considered it big news that AI had come to legal research in the form of ROSS Intelligence, a startup that uses IBM’s Watson platform to answer lawyers’ natural-language legal research questions. Just as last year closed out, another AI company, Premonition — which says it is applying AI to the largest legal database in the world — announced a seed round at a $100 million valuation.
In 2016,...
Crimes involving drugs fueled a 15 percent increase in criminal appeals last year even as the total volume of appeals continued to steadily decline, according to statistics from the JDAO. The vast majority of appeals are unsuccessful: Fewer than 9 percent of total appeals in 2015 resulted in reversals of lower courts, the figures show. Below are highlights of the data on the federal appellate system along with graphics that help explain the statistics.
Total filings in the 12 regional U.S. courts...