FROM THE EDITOR

By RYAN J. MAIERSON Baker Botts L.L.P.

Allocating Risk and Responsibility

I mentioned in the September/October issue of this magazine that one of The Houston Lawyer’s goals is to help practicing lawyers stay current in our legal practices. In this issue, we seek to achieve that goal by focusing on a topic of substantive law—insurance.
Insurance law may sound to some like a narrow focus for an entire issue of this magazine. But Brad Allen, our guest editor for this issue, has assembled a collection of articles spanning an array of issues that should be of interest to all of us. John Smither’s primer on indemnity is an invaluable guide to a topic that affects contract drafting and tort litigation alike. Andrew Fono and Shawn Cox’s article provides possibly the first comprehensive analysis of Texas’ new mold legislation, its achievements and its shortcomings. Chris Martin describes the basics of directors’ and officers’ insurance, how D&O issues have changed in light of recent federal legislation on corporate governance, and what companies should ask for when purchasing D&O insurance. Kris Stockberger analyzes the Texas courts’ approach to determining whether an occurrence is an “accident” such that it may be covered by insurance. Many thanks to Brad for his tireless, and well-informed, work in assembling these articles.
As Professor Tom Baker wrote in the Texas Law Review several years ago, “Insurance ideas and practices define central privileges and responsibilities within a society. In that sense, our insurance arrangements form a material constitution, one that operates through routine, mundane transactions that nevertheless define the contours of individual and social responsibility.” The articles in this magazine demonstrate that premise: while insurance is, at its core, a method of allocating economic loss, it interweaves important policy issues that are of central importance to all of us.

< BACK TO TOP >