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So What Does Your Fidelity Policy Actually Cover?
Businesses purchase fidelity insurance to cover their losses from crime such as employee theft and forgery. This need is usually most pronounced for banks and other financial service firms, where employees have access to enormous amounts of money. For these policyholders, misplaced trust in a resourceful employee can result in millions of dollars disappearing from the policyholder or its clients with only a few keystrokes. When policyholders turn to their fidelity insurance for relief, these businesses then learn that they may have misplaced their trust in their insurance companies, too. All too often, policyholders have to fight for the coverage they reasonably expected.
In perhaps the most widely repeated example, an insurance company will offer a business a fidelity policy for 'direct loss' of money due to theft or forgery. When an employee of the business steals a client's money or goods, or enriches herself through a forged document, and the business pays for its client's loss, most reasonable policyholders would think that the fidelity policy would provide relief. There was a dishonest act by an employee that directly resulted in the need to repay a client. Indeed, many businesses view this situation as the prototypical example of what they intended to insure against when purchasing a fidelity policy. Business reality is that under the doctrine of respondeat superior, employers are almost always strictly liable for losses caused by their employees' and agents' actions. When an employee steals from a client, the employer's responsibility to pay the loss follows like night follows day. However, insurance companies usually take the surprising position that the policyholder's loss was not 'direct,' and therefore is not covered at all.
A Reality-Denying View
Major Differences In UK, U.S. Copyright Laws
This article highlights how copyright law in the United Kingdom differs from U.S. copyright law, and points out differences that may be crucial to entertainment and media businesses familiar with U.S law that are interested in operating in the United Kingdom or under UK law. The article also briefly addresses contrasts in UK and U.S. trademark law.
The Article 8 Opt In
The Article 8 opt-in election adds an additional layer of complexity to the already labyrinthine rules governing perfection of security interests under the UCC. A lender that is unaware of the nuances created by the opt in (may find its security interest vulnerable to being primed by another party that has taken steps to perfect in a superior manner under the circumstances.
Strategy vs. Tactics: Two Sides of a Difficult Coin
With each successive large-scale cyber attack, it is slowly becoming clear that ransomware attacks are targeting the critical infrastructure of the most powerful country on the planet. Understanding the strategy, and tactics of our opponents, as well as the strategy and the tactics we implement as a response are vital to victory.
Legal Possession: What Does It Mean?
Possession of real property is a matter of physical fact. Having the right or legal entitlement to possession is not "possession," possession is "the fact of having or holding property in one's power." That power means having physical dominion and control over the property.
The Anti-Assignment Override Provisions
UCC Sections 9406(d) and 9408(a) are one of the most powerful, yet least understood, sections of the Uniform Commercial Code. On their face, they appear to override anti-assignment provisions in agreements that would limit the grant of a security interest. But do these sections really work?