The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit 2004-2005 Disposition of Insurance Decisions: A Survey and Statistical Review

he Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit decided twenty-four insurance-related cases between June 2004 and April 2005. Those cases originated in nine federal district courts. Unlike its 2002-2004 rulings, the Court of Appeals did not decide any exceptionally novel or complex substantive or procedural questions. In fact, the Fifth Circuit issued four extremely short per curiam decisions, and in two other cases, presented brief analyses and dispositions of statutes-of-limitations and exhaustion-of-administrative-remedies questions under Louisiana’s law. Although the remaining eighteen cases present a diverse body of law and legal issues, only the more novel and highly questionable Fifth Circuit insurance decisions of the survey period warrant further consideration. In order to gain a greater understanding of the factors that influenced the Fifth Circuit’s rulings, limited content analysis of these particular decisions is necessary, and highlights and comparisons of the dispositions of the cases among and between the various federal district courts and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is useful