Dave S wrote:

Actually, while not discounting the very real cost of "trash trippers"
and those who see the legal system as a lottery reward for their own
stupidity...there is another factor to consider.

The underwriters invest the premiums they recieve. When the returns on
that investment perform sub-par, they need to increase premiums to make
up for the shortfall in investment income. In effect, your premium is
actually subsidized through investment, and when the subsidy comes up
short, the policyholder pays. This sort of effect has been felt
throughout the healthcare malpractice-liability industry as well. Its
true that there are lots of judgements for "**** happens" rather than
negligence, but you can also notice that premiums take a sharp hike when
the economy (and investments) is (are) down.

That being said, be thankful they didnt jack your rates in relation to
an actual claim!!.

Dave

Jay Honeck wrote:

That's very true. My premiums only went down about 15% after my first
year of ownership, but the big difference was having my pick of insurers
rather than being limited to one or two who were willing to write the
risk.



That's true with many types of insurance.

Hotel/motel insurance, for example, is seen as a very high risk
endeavor. As a result, there are just two major players left in the
business.

Not surprisingly, they just jacked us $900 per year (which is about
what we had been paying per month) -- and I have no recourse but to
suck it up and pay it. Mind you, we've never had a claim of any kind
-- they just hiked us because, well, because they could.

Which is why I hate product liability and ambulance chasing attorneys
almost beyond measure. I'm sure some trailer trash "tripped" and fell
at a hotel last year, and the *******s sued the poor saps for $20
million -- and now we ALL have to pay for it.

I really can't believe that any pilot in their right mind would want a
product liability attorney a heartbeat away from the presidency. Has
everyone forgotten that these are the same a**holes that almost
eliminated aircraft manufacturing in this country?


Whether you think that high liability insurance cost is due to trial
lawyers or to bad insurance company investments is usually a function of
your political orientaton, as illustrated by Jay here. He really just
wanted to take a shot at the Democratic ticket.

However, the only answer that is actually supported by factual evidence
is that liability insurance rates are mostly a function of how insurance
company investments do in the stock and bond markets, not to any
asserted explosion of jury awards -- especially since most of them get
reduced significantly, and actual lawsuit payouts are a tiny fraction of
premiums. The insurance companies have a nice game going there, they
get people like Jay to cover for their poor investment returns, then
successfully direct his anger at an imagined cause that isn't even a
factor in the real world but suits their purposes. If every business
could fool their customers like that, we'd have a hell of an economy.

For example, Jay is "sure" that some "trailer trash" won 20 million
somewhere for tripping over something, but he doesn't cite an actual
award that was paid -- and you would bet that in his business, word of
that would spread fast.