Reinsurance Focus

A Massachusetts bankruptcy court denied the motion for summary judgment of reinsurers Trenwick America Reinsurance Corporation and Unum Life Insurance Company, which sought to determine that debtor Malcom C. Swasey’s debt owed them was nondischargeable in bankruptcy. The underlying dispute centered on the reinsurers’ claim that Swasey and companies he controlled, IRC, Inc. and IRC Re, engaged in fraud and breached a contract under which IRC Re was to provide retrocessional coverage in connection with a workers’ compensation program. The reinsurers had prevailed in a lawsuit in which the district court held that Swasey violated Massachusetts’s unfair or deceptive practices statute, Chapter 93A, by disavowing the parties’ retrocessional contract in bad faith. The reinsurers sought summary judgment on the grounds that the district court’s determination that Swasey had violated Chapter 93A established, under the doctrine of collateral estoppel, that Swasey’s debt was nondischargeable under Bankruptcy Code § 523(a)(6), which excepts from discharge any debt that results from “willful and malicious injury.” The court denied the reinsurers’ motion, holding that Chapter 93A’s “willful and knowing” standard differed from the standard for willfulness under § 523(a)(6) and that the reinsurers had not established, for purposes of the Bankruptcy Code, that Swasey had intended to injure them. In re Swasey, Case No. 11-20627, Adv. P. No. 12-1040 (USDC Bankr. Mass. Feb. 14, 2013).

This post written by Ben Seessel.

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