Confidentiality battle looms.(Editorial)

National Underwriter Property & Casualty-Risk & Benefits Management, August, 1997

A battle is brewing over insurance companies' ability to invoke attorney-client privilege as a basis for declining to turn-over certain files to insurance department examiners. It looks like it is going to be quite a battle. According to a report in last week's National Underwriter, Allstate is locked in a dispute in two states--Alaska and Nebraska--over its refusal to turn over internal audits to market-conduct examiners.

The issue is an all-lines issue, however, as evidenced by correspondence on the subject between South Dakota Insurance Commissioner Darla Lyon and the American Council of Life Insurance. What makes the situation a particularly thorny one is that it sets the concept of attorney-client privilege--the concept of absolute confidence...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.