RLLI Section 2

1. What does it mean for the RLLI to insist that "Insurance policy interpretation is a question of law" when Illustration 2 describes a setting in which the meaning of "Professional services" is to be determined by the trier of fact based on the party's intent? Might this be an example of the Reporters undercutting in the fine print what the bold faced rule was attempting to assert? 

2. Do you think the reporter is very confident that making insurance policy interpretation a question of law will result in the contents of insurance contracts being better understood by consumers? What is the purpose of comment d?

3. What is Comment e really about? Do you understand why giving an expansive interpretation to liability insurance contracts aligns with a goal of victim compensation. Does the comment provide a reason why liability insurance contracts should not be given a "strained or unreasonable" meaning? What reasons might the reporter have provided had the reporter been so inclined?

4. Section 2(3) reads "Except as this Restatement or applicable law otherwise provides, the ordinary rules of contract interpretation apply to the interpretation of liability insurance contracts." And, yet, comment h reads "Although the rules of insurance policy interpretation may be understood as a subset of the general law of contracts, the insurance context is sufficiently different from those that inform the general contract-law paradigm thjat insurance policy interpretation rules are properly considered to be distinct from general contract-interpretation rules in some respects." Is the comment consistent with the text? How different are insurance contracts from most form contracts (rental car agreements, click agreements on the Internet, residential leases, etc.?)

5. Comment i asserts that regulatory approval of a provision does not mean that the provision is or is not ambiguous? But why wouled a regulatory agency approve an ambiguous provision? Shouldn't it be some evidence? Why do you think the Reporter included this provision?

6. For those reading the Reporter's Notes, what do they have to say about the reasonable expectations doctrine?

7. The "sudden and accidental" exception to the pollution exclusion described in Illustration 1 is one of the provisions removed in the more modern "absolute pollution exclusion." Some courts were holding that events that were very gradual could nonetheless be sudden.