Welcome to LawShelf’s course on insurance law.  This course looks at the rules that govern many kinds of insurance and introduces you to the purposes that insurance fulfills and the regulatory landscape against which it is governed.

This is an introductory level course and no prior knowledge of law or the insurance industry is required.

The course starts with an overview of insurance, its purposes and the parties to an insurance contract. We also look at the origins of federal regulation of the insurance industry and discuss the concurrent state regulatory activities that are also binding on insurance agreements.

Module two looks at various insurance coverage issues and goes through a litany of cases that discuss the applications of these rules. The rules we’ll discuss include waiver, estoppel and the parol evidence rule, three contract law doctrines that impact insurance contracts. We’ll also look at the reasonable expectations doctrine, which has been used by courts to protect the reasonable expectations of insureds. We’ll discuss a series of cases to which these doctrines have been applied and then focus on acts that cannot be insured against, due to illegality or public policy.

In module three, we will look at the procedure for making claims on insurance. We’ll look at the notice of loss, which typically must be filed in the wake of the insured event and also discuss other documents typically prepared with claims, including proofs of loss and appraisals. We will also focus on the responsibilities of the insured in cooperating with the insurance company’s investigation and to defend covered lawsuits that are defensible.

In module four, we turn to life insurance, first focusing on the various types of life insurance and the requirement that the policy owner have an insurable interest in the insured. We’ll also look at the role of the beneficiary and at a series of cases in which courts had to determine beneficiaries where their identities were unclear. We will also look at life insurance coverage of suicide and the typical provisions and state laws that govern such.

Finally, in module five, we’ll focus on a litany of other types of insurance and the unique rules that apply to each of them. These include fire insurance, casualty insurance, Marine insurance, automobile insurance and general liability insurance.

Once you complete this course, you will have a firmly rooted understanding of the landscape of insurance law and we hope you will use this course as a springboard to learn more about the specific type of insurance questions that are most relevant to you.

Best of luck and we welcome your feedback.