Bread and Butter
There is a tendency when blogging to focus on cases that that are (1) important, (2) novel, (3) strange, or (4) wrong. These are the sorts of cases that most people—and, candidly, the TLB editors—find to be most interesting. (My colleague Bill Dodge may be an exception.) Every now and then, however, it is useful…
Continue ReadingTexas, Insurance Contracts, and Foreign Forum Selection Clauses
A pair of recent Fifth Circuit cases — both involving damage to yachts — suggest that that court will enforce foreign forum selection clauses even when they appear in insurance contracts. This post first describes these cases. It then queries whether enforcing foreign forum selection clauses against Texas policyholders is, in fact, consistent with the…
Continue ReadingParsing Invalidating Statutes (Part I)
In previous posts, I have written about how the precise language used in a choice-of-law or forum selection clause can prove consequential in litigation. In this post, I argue that the precise language used in state statutes purporting to invalidate these clauses can likewise have an outsized effect. There are hundreds of state statutes that…
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