Subro on the Go

It’s been two years since COVID-19 not only radically changed our daily lives but altered how recovery professionals approach litigating claims. Yes, two years have passed! In the first few months of the pandemic, courts, litigators and recovery professionals quickly adapted to use readily available remote tools like Zoom, Teams and other platforms to keep cases going, hold hearings, participate in mediations and proceed with depositions. In this latest episode of Cozen O’Connor’s Subro on the Go podcast, our regular co-hosts, David Brisco and Joe Rich, are joined by their longtime colleagues Joshua Goodman and Tony Morrone for a look back at the impact of remote litigation tools over the course of the pandemic and what role these remote tools may continue to play going forward as courts and communities start to fully reopen.

Have you ever had a subro attorney tell you that you should file your case in state court versus federal court, or vice versa, and wondered, what’s the difference? Why would I want to be in one court versus another? In this episode of Cozen O’Connor’s Subro on the Go podcast, David Brisco is joined by a panel of subro attorneys, Gil Hernandez, Erick Kirker, and Virginia Markovich, to discuss how certain cases end up in federal court and the key differences between litigating subro cases in federal versus state courts.

COGSA, Carmack, Allisons, and Himalaya Clause. These terms may not mean much for a traditional property subrogation professional, but if you are going to diversify into the world of ocean marine and inland marine subro, then these are a few of the many terms you will need to become familiar with. In this episode of Cozen O’Connor’s Subro on the Go podcast, hosts Joe Rich and David Brisco are joined by attorney Rob Phelan to talk about a new trending kids toy and the various losses (and subrogation issues) that can occur during the shipment of this product from overseas to the port and on to the final destination.

Every subrogation case is, at its heart, a story about a loss event. As subrogation professionals, we endeavor to tell a story of the loss event and resulting damages in the most effective way possible, using photos and videos as our tools to explain liability and damages issues. Ultimately, we use our story as a way to persuade an opponent, mediator or jury that we are owed a recovery. In this podcast, Joe Rich, Dave Brisco, Ginny Markovich and Jeremy Jones from Cozen O’Connor’s Subrogation & Recovery Department discuss the importance of photos and videos in subrogation cases, highlighting their usefulness in both liability and damages presentations, methods for taking photos and videos, cutting edge 3D rendering technology, and available social media and other third party sources for photos and videos.

Smart smoke detectors, vehicle data on key fobs, and geofencing are just a few of the new internet of things technologies emerging today. Subrogation professionals need to be aware of this ever-growing industry, including what new sources of data it provides to the subro investigation and what new types of claims may arise. In this episode of Cozen O’Connor’s Subro on the Go podcast, hosts Joe Rich and David Brisco are joined by Dana Meyers to discuss the internet of things and subrogation – where we’ve been since first doing this presentation almost 10 years ago, where we are with IoT products relating to subrogation, and where we’re going as we look to the future of IoT and our industry.

Government tort claims come in a variety of shapes and sizes – broken city water main floods, bridge collapses, dam failures, government vehicles crashing into your insured’s building, etc. And just as the types of losses vary, so do the requirements regarding both placing the government entity on notice and tort cap on your recovery. In this episode, Cozen O’Connor Subro on the Go hosts Joe Rich and David Brisco are joined by Dan Luccaro to discuss general rules of thumb regarding being certain your claim is not barred for failing to provide timely required notice or timely file suit after a denial of claim, as well as various tort caps on your recovery for certain states.

Do you have a subro question that you are anxious to ask? Then welcome to Subro Mailbag. In this episode, Cozen O’Connor Subro on the Go hosts David Brisco and Joe Rich read and answer questions from our podcast listeners on a variety of subro topics. How do you describe subrogation to friends and family? How do you deal with a defense that will not pay on a clear liability case? These and many more questions are answered in this fun and informative episode.

Will any expert do? Choosing the right expert is one of the most important decisions to be made in a subrogation investigation. Asking the question of whether an expert is required for your claim is easy; answering the question requires thinking about several complex factors. In this episode, Cozen O’Connor subrogation attorneys David Brisco, Joe Rich and Suzanne Radcliff discuss key considerations for selecting experts and some rules of the road for managing forensic investigations. Today’s podcast discusses how to evaluate the appropriate expert discipline required for different types of claims and lines of business, with a focus on general v. specific subject matter experts, jurisdictional considerations, and compliance with Daubert and other applicable standards.

Wildfires continue to be national front-page news, be it the destruction caused by the fires themselves or the litigation that lasts for years after the fire has been suppressed. In the latest “Subro on the Go” podcast episode, hosts Joe Rich and David Brisco are joined by Howard Maycon, lead counsel for the subrogation industry in almost all of the major California wildfires, to discuss one aspect of wildfire cases – the early investigation stage. Part of the early investigation involves gathering all available data to aid in narrowing the general area of fire origin as part of the overall process in trying to determine its cause. This includes, for example, the significant amount of witness and social media photo and video data available and how the images themselves and corresponding metadata are utilized to help prove the cause of a wildfire.

While politicians may be more interested in whether a state is a Blue State or Red State, subrogation professionals want to know if a state is what we refer to as a “Good State or Bad State” based on its comparative fault laws. Are you a Bad State where a certain level of fault of your insured will entirely bar your subrogation claim? Or are you a Good State where your subrogation claim is simply reduced by the portion of your insured’s comparative fault, but is not barred. In this podcast, Cozen O’Connor subrogation attorneys Joe Rich, David Brisco, and Jake Skaggs discuss the differences between the comparative fault rules in the Good States and Bad States, as well as those states in between these extremes.