State Farm release form for compensation settlement

Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2012 11:40 pm Post Subject: signing a release

"expressly reserves all rights of the parties released to pursue their legal remedies, if any, against the undersigned, their heirs, executors, agents and assigns"
If the language includes firms or corporations liable or, who might be claimed to be liable, none of whom admit any liability and all expressly deny liability" would this release include the insurance company?

Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2012 03:12 am Post Subject:

At goeppic, in order to understand the meaning of that particular clause, you have to place it in its proper context. From the excerpt you provided, it is difficult to attribute any independent meaning to that phrase, it needs to be construed with the rest of the release language or at least with the remainder of the paragraph from which it was extracted. The clause itself appears to be preserving a right to pursue a remedy but doesn’t disclose under what circumstances.

Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2012 10:24 am Post Subject:

Counsel carefully points out a problem with goeppic's post. That clause could follow a statement such as, "If a collision occurs on the first Tuesday following the first Monday in a month . . ." and conclude with a statement such as "In all other circumstances, you're on your own, dude."

Now, we know that's not really true, because state insurance laws stand to prohibit such conduct on the part of insurance companies. But, as Counsel correctly points out, we don't know the context in which the statement was made, and if faced with a similar question, the court would say, "We must construe the statement by reading it not in isolation, but in its relation to the entire contract." This is a basic tenet of contract law.

So goeppic, please repost the statement in its entire context and you'll probably get a better answer.