The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit: A Selective Review and Analysis of the Panels' 2010-2011 Insurance Law Options

The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s panels decided approximately 134 insurance-law or insurance-related disputes between July 1, 2010, and June 30, 2011.1 To a greater or lesser degree, however, only twenty-six decisions are simply highlighted or discussed fully in this Article.2 Of course, the reason is not complicated: Slip opinions and unpublished decisions comprised the greater majority of the Fifth Circuit’s rulings. In addition, among the cases selected for review, thirty-nine percent (38.5%) originated in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. And, every Louisiana case involved a first-party insurance dispute. To be sure, that percentage is significant. The explanation, however, mirrors largely the one proffered in the 2009–2010 Fifth Circuit review: Three to six years after causing massive property losses along the Gulf Coast, Hurricanes Katrina and Gustav continue to generate large numbers of first-party insurance lawsuits in the Eastern District of Louisiana as well as in the Southern District of Mississippi