With my apologies to Vince Lombardi, I must dissent from his oft-quoted advice that "the best defense is a good offense." In the civil justice system, the best defense is one that someone else pays for.
This quarterly column is usually about avoiding E&O exposure, but even the best preventative measures will only make an insurance professional bullet resistant, not bulletproof. Just as the unlucky policyholder doesn't expect the joy rider to collide with his new Camaro, his insurance agent can't anticipate everything. E&O claims are going to happen. They may be bogus or righteous, but one thing is certain: They are expensive to defend against.
Whether on the defense or offense, someone has to pay the price of admission to the courthouse. The litigants themselves pay that price, or most of it, and the unfortunate truth is that the price can be higher than the value of winning or the risk of losing—not always, but often enough that a victory at trial may be a Pyrrhic one.
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