I hate medical lien claims when it comes to my clients. And that is because, in New York, the law is unsettled as to when and how an insurance company that provided medical care to an injured party can recoup its payments. Lawyers hate uncertainty.

Today, in Fasso v Doerr, the Court of Appeals tried to tackle the issue. I say “tried” because the legislation is unclear, leaving a vacuum for the court to work in.

The details of this problem will bore most readers to tears, but if you are a practitioner (or policy maker/wonk) you should click on that link and read.

Part III of the decision is the request to the Legislature to clear this mucky area up.

Updated: As noted in the comments by Roy Mura, he has done a long treatment of this case over at his blog, Coverage Counsel. If you find the issue of permissive intervention by insurers to be of interest, as well as the issue of equitable subrogation rights by an insurer that they may have (and if you practice personal injury law you have to be up to date on this, even if you hate the subject), then head over there for a reading of Mura’s post.

Rumors are percolating that NYS Superintendent of Insurance Eric Dinallo will head the SEC in an Obama administration. This information comes via William Walters at the FedPoint Blog.

If this happens, it will no doubt have an effect on the medical malpractice insurance task force that he has up and running in New York, to determine what, if anything, should be done about malpractice insurance rates. He had previously threatened a $50,000 surcharge on doctors as a way to move his task force along.

Dinallo had been appointed by Eliot Spitzer, who had given a rousing speech to doctors that had come to Albany to lobby last year, just days before his prostitution scandal erupted. Many consumer advocates have been worried that he would try to “fix” the malpractice insurance problems by restricting access to injured patients to the courts, instead of addressing the source of the problems.

Anyone with more details on the rumors, feel free to contact me here: Blog [at] TurkewitzLaw.com

The personal injury bar likes to think of itself as recession proof. Regardless of whether stocks go up or down, people still get hurt because other people do dumb things.

But with the meltdown of mega insurer AIG, we could see something different. Even if they get rescued, there will no doubt be other insurers that have problems. We see this from time to time on a small scale when the executives drop their business ball, but we could now see it on a larger scale if things continue to go south. And a bankrupt insurance company would mean that the business end of lawyering could see some issues related to actually being able to get paid on a claim.

In New York, we have the State Liquidation Bureau that takes over when an insurance company goes belly-up. But even if they take over, there are long delays in getting the money in the door. In the words of the Bureau itself:

Unfortunately, the rehabilitation or liquidation of an insolvent insurance carrier usually means a delay in the settlement of outstanding claims. Where a solvent insurance company may settle claims in a matter of weeks, the complications of dealing with an insolvent company can lengthen the process considerably.

The mileage may vary in your state, but one thing is for sure, this business (and law is certainly a business, among other things) isn’t quite as recession-proof as some believe.

One last thing, with the weekend meltdown of Wall Street, lawyers are signing up in record numbers for continuing legal education classes in bankruptcy, according to CLE provider LawLine.