Decisions, decisions…..

And we some hard choices to make for our nominees to the LexisNexis Insurance Law Center 2008 Person of the year:

The LexisNexis Insurance Law Center is now receiving nominations for the Center’s “Insurance Law Persons of the Year” award. The award, like similar awards in other fields, seeks to identify and recognize people who have been a major force in the insurance law during the preceding year. We anticipate that the awards will continue to be given each year.

The Insurance Law Center will select the following:

Policyholder Attorney of the Year – the attorney who did the most in 2008 to effectively advance policyholder positions and improve insurance law from the perspective of policyholders.

Insurer Attorney of the Year — the attorney who did the most in 2008 to effectively advance insurer positions and improve insurance law from the perspective of insurers.

Insurance Regulator of the Year – the international, federal, state, or local regulator who had most impact during 2008.

Insurance Jurist of the Year — the judge or justice whose rulings had the largest impact on insurance law during 2008.

Recipients in each of the four categories should be someone who has had a substantial impact on the legal aspects of insurance. Although company executives are not ineligible for the award, our focus is not so much on insurance business and finance but upon insurance regulation, litigation, coverage, or other matters of law or legal policy. Consequently, the recipient in each of these four categories should be someone whose contributions are primarily in the area of insurance law rather than risk management, product design, marketing, or management.

And our regular slabbed readers know we are literally chock full of choices in these categories. This may surprise some people but I’ve already made my mind up to submit David Rossmiller for insurer attorney of the year, not for his Scruggs blogging (when he was letting State Farm ghost write his blog) but his body of work on the Katrina litigation including his excellent analysis of anti-concurrent causation at New Appleman.

The choice for policyholder attorney will be tough as we’ve had many fine consumer lawyers post and/or communicate with us. Soren, Rick, Johnny and Chip have all in their own ways made significant contributions on behalf of policyholders joining elite policyholder lawyers like Jeff Marr and David Berardinelli. Nominations are due March 6 and the submission instructions are as follows:

So, please send your nominations to [email protected] no later than March 6, 2009 and be on the lookout for announcement of the finalists and a chance to participate in the selection process. We anticipate choosing the 2008 Person of the Year during the week of March 15, 2009.

sop