Reinsurance Focus

Plaintiffs Trenwick American Reinsurance Corporation (“Trenwick Re”) and Unum Life Insurance Company of America (“Unum”) brought an action against reinsurer IRC Re, Limited (“IRC Re”) and others arising from a claims dispute under an alleged reinsurance contract under which IRC Re purportedly agreed to reinsure a portion of a risk also partially reinsured by Trenwick Re. Specifically, Trenwick Re alleges that IRC Re agreed to continue to reinsure a 19% portion of a managed workers compensation insurance program (the “Compcare Program”) which IRC Re had previously reinsured, when Trenwick Re and various other parties entered into a quota share reinsurance treaty covering the Compcare Program.

The plaintiffs filed a lengthy Memorandum arguing that the defendants failed to satisfy their discovery obligations by (1) failing to provide responsive documents to certain requests, despite having claimed to have provided them in a 50,000 page purported “document dump;” (2) failing to provide documents under the defendants’ custody or control in the possession of defendant IRC Re’s “management and administrative services provider,” Beecher Carlson, a Bermuda company; (3) failing to produce documents alluded to by defendants’ designated 30(b)(6) deposition witness; and (4) failing to provide complete answers to interrogatories and failing to specify objections beyond “boilerplate” assertions. Defendants filed a Memorandum in opposition. The Court, in a three-sentence electronic order, granted portions of plaintiff’s motion pertaining to points (1) and (4) above, and noted that defendants would not be permitted to rely on any documents not produced in response to plaintiff’s requests. Trenwick American Reinsurance Corp. v. IRC Inc., Case No. 07 -12160 (USDC D. Mass. Dec. 17, 2008).

This post written by John Pitblado.