A Video Explaining Settlements & the Ethical Burden of Attorneys Unlisted Video

A Lawyer May Never Lie to a Judge but May Engage in Puffing to Adversaries

Settlements of litigation, whether funded by insurance or not, raise ethical issues that all parties and their attorneys must deal with before the settlement is effected. The decision to settle belongs to the plaintiff. This is especially important in cases with multiple parties and multiple attorneys.

The Third US Circuit Court of Appeals revived a proposed class action suit against a group of attorneys from southern states brought by more than 2,600 former clients from northern states who say they were cheated out of their fair share of $400 million in asbestos personal injury settlements in the Mississippi state courts when the attorneys gave larger payouts to southern plaintiffs. The northern plaintiffs claimed that their share was reduced because the southern attorneys wanted to allocate a greater percentage of aggregate settlements to southerners in order to minimize the percentages paid to the northern plaintiffs’ local counsel.

Attempts by States to Impose Stale Liabilities on Insurers

In Movsesian v. Versicherung, 578 F.3d 1052, 1053 (9th Cir. 2009), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that Section 354.4 of the California Code of Civil Procedure, which was written to extend the statute of limitations until 2010 for claims arising out of life insurance policies issued to Armenian Genocide victims, [The statute identified “Armenian Genocide victim” as “any person of Armenian or other ancestry living in the Ottoman Empire during the period of 1915 to 1923, inclusive, who died, was deported, or escaped to avoid persecution during that period."] interfered with the national government’s conduct of foreign relations. The district court’s order denying the Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss was reversed and the case remanded to the district court to dismiss the suit.

© 2021 – Barry Zalma

Barry Zalma, Esq., CFE, now limits his practice to service as an insurance consultant specializing in insurance coverage, insurance claims handling, insurance bad faith and insurance fraud almost

equally for insurers and policyholders. He also serves as an arbitrator or mediator for insurance related disputes. He practiced law in California for more than 44 years as an insurance coverage and claims handling lawyer and more than 52 years in the insurance business. He is available at http://www.zalma.com and zalma@zalma.com.

Mr. Zalma is the first recipient of the first annual Claims Magazine/ACE Legend Award.

Over the last 53 years Barry Zalma has dedicated his life to insurance, insurance claims and the need to defeat insurance fraud. He has created the following library of books and other materials to make it possible for insurers and their claims staff to become insurance claims professionals.

Go to the podcast Zalma On Insurance at https://anchor.fm/barry-zalma;  Follow Mr. Zalma on Twitter at https://twitter.com/bzalma; Go to Barry Zalma videos at Rumble.com at https://rumble.com/c/c-262921; Go to Barry Zalma on YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCysiZklEtxZsSF9DfC0Expg; Go to the Insurance Claims Library – https://zalma.com/blog/insurance-claims-library/ Read posts from Barry Zalma at https://parler.com/profile/Zalma/posts; and the last two issues of ZIFL at https://zalma.com/zalmas-insurance-fraud-letter-2/