Declarations

Claims capacity
“I don’t see the CEA being a healthy organization without the industry being enthusiastic about wanting to be a part of the CEA and selling the product aggressively. Let me just remind everybody, we’re talking about 25 or 30 percent of our claims-paying capacity vanishing.”

— California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner commenting on the need for the California Earthquake Authority to work with insurers to reach a settlement with insurers on the first-industry assessment layer that is used to pay claims. The IAL will sunset on Dec. 1, 2008, leaving the CEA with limited funds to pay claims. Currently, member-insurance companies pay an assessment to the Authority.

Size doesn’t matter
“Size does not get you respect. But you only need to look at the banking industry to see that regional operations can be just as successful. Frankly, often, what a lot of our [insurance] agents recognize as well, is your business is often grown within a local area. So [independent] agents should have no problem competing with anybody in the marketplace.”

— Rick Quagliaroli, president and CEO of Strongwood Holdings Insurance Corp. and its subsidiary companies Sequoia Insurance Co. and Networked Insurance Agents, commenting on the ability of small, regional carriers to compete with larger national companies. Regional carriers often have an advantage in that they are less bureaucratic, have local decision-making, excellent technology and are quicker to roll out new products. He advised agents to form a portfolio that includes both regional and national carriers.

Storm center
“I think the bottom line is that he simply did not listen to his senior staff.”

— Max Mayfield, predecessor of Bill Proenza, director of the National Hurricane center, who has been reassigned and replaced by Ed Rappaport after employee questioned Proenza’s leadership. Proenza was replaced after 23 employees — about half his staff — urged his immediate removal. The center’s eighth director, he had been on the job since January.

Suit dismissed
“This case was giving American justice a black eye around the world, and it was all the more upsetting because it was a judge and lawyer who was bringing the suit.”

— Paul Rothstein, a Georgetown University law professor, hailing the rejection by a judge of a lawsuit that sought $54 million by taking a South Korean dry cleaner’s promise of “Satisfaction Guaranteed” to its most legalistic extreme. The plaintiff, Roy L. Pearson, himself an administrative judge, became a worldwide symbol of legal abuse by seeking jackpot justice from a simple complaint that a neighborhood dry cleaners in Washington, D.C., lost the pants from a suit and tried to give him a pair that were not his. But a judge decided that Pearson was not entitled to a penny. In fact, the judge decided Pearson owes the owners of the dry cleaners $1,000 in clerical court costs.