There's a reason midsummer is often referred to as the “dog days”: It's called heat, pure and simple. Heat makes you sluggish, gives you a whole new perspective on the practicality of afternoon siestas and generally lowers your energy level from Ten Years After to Mungo Jerry. (Where the term “dog days” came from is another column for another time. Check back next year!)

So, now is a perfect time of year to kick back with a chilly glass of lemonade and enjoy a good read. I've been wending my way through the latest Jeff Shaara book, “The Steel Wave.” It's the second of his planned World War II trilogy, this one focused on the preparations for and implementation of D-Day.
Shaara's specialty is historical fiction. Not the “let's take a good story and set it in medieval England” type, but a highly skilled art form brought to fruition in his father Michael's Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Killer Angels,” which for my money may just be the best book about the Civil War ever written.
Shaara's method is to take historical events and personalities and tell their story by putting you into their heads. While the facts and events are verifiable, obviously we don't know exactly what was going through a specific person's mind at a specific moment, but through meticulous research Shaara makes his best guess and tells the story as if his suppositions were real. He takes pains to stress his ideas are conjecture, and although massive research goes into his work, it's still fiction. His books are great stories by a great storyteller.
If only insurance folks could navigate that potential conundrum so impressively. Judging by a veritable plethora of questions crossing the radar lately, “opinions” and “theory” are far too often presented as “fact,” to the confusion and detriment of us all. And the real danger arises when these supposed facts are then used as the basis for coverage decisions, to the detriment of unsuspecting insureds. Alas, this is often how our advice and counsel morphs from nectar of the gods (for our clients) to chum for the sharks (attorneys).
A key example arose last week. A company underwriter e-mailed me the following (edited for brevity and to remove identifying information):

Mixed responses? Guessing? My response (also edited):