When is rogue employee conduct covered? Course and scope of employment decisions
Reading cases about insurance coverage for employee bad conduct is sometimes difficult -- not just the legal part of it, the facts are often pretty disturbing. I mean, some of these folks? We're talking major league weirdos. After I read some of these cases, I feel like going to wash my hands -- or not, considering they are often about some wacko using bathroom surveillance equipment. You read these, you've got to watch The Sound of Music three or four times just to get your mind right again.
Randy Maniloff has done a service by taking a close look at some of these cases and how the coverage issues in them shake out. Here's a copy of a good article he wrote on the subject for a recent edition of Mealey's. Didn't ask him how many times he had to wash his hands during the course and scope of writing this piece.
Mr.Rossmiller: this is a very interesting read. Your introductory comment, however intended, seems slightly pinched by an invested ingredient like a super nova thorn in the side, so I missed the obvious subtle message, I suppose. On the whole, Mr. maniloff's haut and well researched piece seems to be along the line of what lay people understand insurance as errors and ommissions. I'm certainly lay, and would think that others are as well. Your hand-wringing, on the issue of Maniloff, is not vague if your're hammering on the Rigsby issue, and - as far-fetched as it might seem - the debacle in the so-called Scruggs Nation Report.
I enjoyed the Maniloff, very clean, very academic, but not quite synchronized with the introduction. Sorry, I truly don't get the message, but some of your expert prime numbers are confusing in relation to the article(s) - when I read the blog.
Before going into areas quite unfamiliar, with those hand-wash pictures which have nice flash, I envision Scruggs' position today, and I think how strange it would be to draw conclusions from his posit from good lawyer to not so good lawyer trusted in contract to work for his clients best interest and failed because of a clever investigation by our government officials. Is it possible that Maniloff's scope of context includes the conduct that runs "far afield" just as Bernie Evers scope of conduct did? One a lawyer, both holding a fiduciary?
Further, while the matter of discussion and implied bias toward the Rigsby's, et al, and Scruggs as well, I can't imagine how many dirty hands are actually in the corportate world, and why? I'd like to point out, however, that Scruggs, if he is in this mix, and should if he isn't, did a masterful thing in the art of being a lawyer. He took his own path, which was different from most (and I am serious), and he did it where many others before him would not have taken on such a battle. In the wholeness of the area of tobacco's killing and property destruction, Scruggs contribution as "a rogue", just that, produced a social and vital civic change. Insurance, in that matter, wasn't needed, because I personally am aware that insurance in tobacco companies is not very handy but it - and this is just one example - while supporting policies for life insurance, MetLife held a 50 year renewable insurance policy for Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company, and it was simply business. It still is. I think there's not a lot of hand-wringing at the bed-side of a dying 40's something female with small cell terminal cancer that is imbued with "scope and context" for MetLife (go, Snoopy!), and getting Met, it pays, didn't and doesn't. A non-issue. But few know what insurance cares to provide the buyer, but all seem to have to carry it. On the whole, I don't see much difference in ragging about Rigsby's and Scruggs when you can actually, without malice, report that large insurance is about making money - even death money. It's not really about pay-off's. And to be hand-washing is a metaphor for many errors, not simply with the two hands you hold. But on both sides. Maniloff is, fairly writing, a scholarly piece, and I see the introduction as a missing link to the link. I'm not clear on this - it's the background difference, I dare say.
However, the article says some things that were always apparent. The most telling is in the question about what do you do when people are not doing what their job descriptions tell them to do?
My, isn't that an odd perception. People who play American football know where they are assigned, and that's the position, and they play it, and their contract pays them, so, in the essence, there's no "big secret" to destroy a team when the team losses are high on any given game day. But Maniloff is more in tune with "jobs" as corporate bunny's of the everlasting norm. Law is a corporate helper. And who is violating what when the insurance is "being scoped" for context in terms of a "rougue"? Examine Enron.
Apply Maniloff to Enron's demise. First, the CEO was a "rogue", so I assume there was some insurance. But that's not where the muck was raked first. There were "rogue" advisor's - Anderson was "rogue", weren't they? And how about the supervising on contract retainer law firm? Was Vincent and Elkins, big time firm in Texas, "rogue" in giving "rogue" advise to Anderson's firm, that gave "rogue" advise to the multi-"rogue's" at Enron? Lots to consider here. Surely, if you're giving the moral side of an issue, those clean hands have to go up, up, up on a boardroom stick to get to the "pay-off". And, who can recall if the advising law firm ever got a call from the "loss" sector at the insurance companies. As the scholarly article points out, it's all about the context of the policy. In law, where a fraud in business is practically an assurance at some time or other, it is surely provided that "fraud" be in view if not in scope.
The Maniloff read was good. I see no malice and nothing to cause the suffering in the introductory, but we all have our pain, most of it is where the loyalty meets the money.
So, if the Maniloff piece was about how painfully and sorry it is to have "rogue" employee's, I guess Scruggs is just as culpable as Bernie or - I think somewhere there's a "Rigsby" point all the less - but at some point "rogue" isn't milktoast, and Scruggs never was that. I think it is time to stop harping (good southernism) on the flaws of a man who probably did more good than bad, and as he faces his "Enron", he has done at least a lot of good things, and for that, pimply curmudgeon need to look at what balance there is in seeking out "fraud" in our so-called civil business practice, of which insurance is not at all nobly endowed but surely long ingested into the system as both somewhat good and somewhat not, and, as it goes, there's enough hand-wringing to go around. And Katrina killed a "culture", one as old as that going back before Nepolean's sale of the Louisiana Purchase, and destroyed grand traditions, and even did terrible things to a wonderful and diverse community for miles and miles - so long and so very responsive to the needs of America's history, long before 1812. It's sad to think that - and I have no doubts about the intentions of insurance's basic fallacy - make contract, make fraud, keep money. And so, in the "rogue", while it isn't the norm in insurance, it certainly is in the blood of Americans.
And no amount of hand-wringing will forgive the hand-wringer whose inward seeking is just as flawed as those who are - as the culture knows - always ready for clean up.
Respectfully, Scruggs is what he is, not a "rogue", but what the French call a man of action, and that is to be honored, to be favorably remembered. I don't think Umphrey's will be any more lustful about taking the load off the Mississippi lawyers, but, in the mix, it is as it was, the product of "rogue" that insurance companies don't want to understand, because it's all about something that is true. The so-called "rogue" has no contract with fraud, just as the contract with any fraud is viatiated by it's very existence. Good read for Maniloff. Introspective read for Rossmiller's wash pan. May a bit of good rogue go on, for that is what the South has always been for me - and not a bad thing if lives are crushed by insurance, bad business behavior, or simple fraud. I see both as part of law and civility. And malice is not anywhere but where you want to find it - so time to let Scruggs loose of some misperceptions.
The post has nothing to do with Scruggs or the Rigsbys. One of the cases Randy wrote about is some wacko with bathroom surveillance equipment and a high number of these kind of coverage cases involve some sexual weirdo. My introduction merely reflects the reaction of a normal person who find these people disgusting.
Thanks for the clarity. Your blog is about insurance, but I began reading it because it
evolved into almost an institutional script of several "rogue"
employee issues. dealing with "rogue" acts. It's really a very interesting term, but I'm still having trouble with how weird sexual harrassment is. I guess I lost my interest in daisy chain shock years ago, and I don't watch Boston Legal. I like Law and Order which has lots of "weirdo's" who are the proximate cause of rogue behavior - on or off the job. You have a nice idea about your logic. I think, on the whole, it's hard to miss at least a subliminal notion which could relate to rogue acts so often found here. I never saw "rogue" in terms of a prosecutor's presentation of assault or criminal behavior, but it's apparently a useful description of something that could deserve a handy wipe or two.
I wonder if legend Westerner Tom Horn is a "rogue" employee. He worked for a security firm and his job was actually not very legal because he killed people for his employer. That could be worthy of lots of hand wipes, but I might be weird for taking Tom Horn's side when the employee hanged him.
Whoa.
Wow. I think we have discovered the author of the poems recited in the movie "Slingblade" or Chase's prayer in "Vacation." I recognize the style and vocabulary choices.
No, Bothered, I think if you checked you would have to credit your obsevation to Billy Bob Thornton [not a bad writer]. As I recall, he wrote, directed, and got the Academy Award for Slingblade. Both those films were pretty far back and may actually have been on the old "tape" format. I'm sure Chase's "Vacation" in 1983 exhibits the best comedic elements of your taste, and wasn't that a cute film? Your view's are appreciated.
However, the script was by John Hughes. I don't know if Hughes' words were in Chase's prayer, [if that's a point that you could make], but some script writers use dramaturge writers, such as Jammie Lee Curtis, and Beth Henley, so maybe your observation is about as flat as the note. Bless us, there's limitations in everything. It's ok. You're still going to follow your titular identity.
Still bothered? Try using film on discs. An awesome idea! And there's some excellent script writer's work in this new format.
Yeah, throw away all those fat tapes and see how interesting a really fresh analogy can be. On the other hand, I hope you don't continue to bother over this kind of trivia.
and when the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with mars then peacevwill guide the planets and the handwringing and the handwringers will stop.
You're in a literary slump, Bothered. Just grab your net, and cast. You do have a catcher, but it's not in the Rye. "Hair" revisited probably is just another bourbon away from a good ending. Peace.