Declarations – Midwest

All Clear

“The data is clear. The experiment is over in Michigan. Helmets save lives.”

—Heather Drake of AAA Michigan. Michigan’s insurance and medical industries as well as some rider groups want lawmakers and Gov. Rick Snyder to reinstate the state’s mandatory motorcycle helmet law. They say modifying the law to allow people over the age of 21 to ride helmetless is costing lives. Other motorcycle enthusiasts say helmets should be a rider’s choice.

Confidential Weaknesses

“National Union merely assumes that, because burglars circumvented and disabled a TycoIS alarm system … they necessarily must have had confidential information about the facility’s security system and that TycoIS must have failed to safeguard this information.”

—Attorney Amy Markim of Hartford, Conn., in a motion to dismiss a lawsuit against Tyco Integrated Systems LLC, brought by Indianapolis, Ind.-based Eli Lilly and Co. and its insurer, National Union Fire Insurance Co. of Pittsburgh. Tyco is being sued over the 2010 theft of $60 million in pharmaceuticals from an Ely Lilly warehouse in Connecticut. The suit alleges the thieves had access to a report prepared by Tyco detailing the building’s security weaknesses.

Illegal Acts Not Covered

“This whole debate about gun liability was triggered by the Sandy Hook event, also the event in Colorado, both of which were illegal and neither of which would be covered under any policy ever written in the history of the insurance industry.”

—Insurance Information Institute President Dr. Robert P. Hartwig, refers to the mass shootings that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., and in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater last year, and the many gun liability insurance measures that have been filed in state legislatures this year. Many in the insurance industry say that while the bills are well-meaning, mandatory insurance is not the way to address the problem of gun-related violence.