Interest-Based Negotiations in a Transformed Labor–Management Setting

The authors introduce a group of essays that evolved from a March 2003 symposium on the path-breaking new partnership and use of interest-based negotiation (IBN) at Kaiser Permanente (KP), one of the largest integrated health care programs in the United States. They briefly trace the history of the IBN approach (both success stories and failures); the growth of this phenomenon; and its use in collective bargaining settings. The KP case, the focus of the symposium (which was jointly sponsored by MIT's Institute for Work and Employment Relations and Harvard's Program on Negotiation), is by far the largest instance of the use of IBN in U.S. labor relations history.     

Absolute Pollution: Exclusion Update

This article reviews court decisions from 2001 and 2002 discussing the absolute pollution exclusion in the context of property damage, bodily injury claims, and other types of harm. In recent cases, courts have consistently found the absolute pollution exclusion to be clear and unambiguous, excluding coverage for “environmental” and other types of property damage claims. However, there is a split of authority and inconsistency in how courts analyze and interpret the absolute pollution exclusion when bodily injury claims are at issue. The analysis and court rulings are often determined by the specific policy language as applied to the facts in the cases.