THE OKLAHOMA BAR JOURNAL 20 | AUGUST 2026 Statements or opinions expressed in the Oklahoma Bar Journal are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Oklahoma Bar Association, its officers, Board of Governors, Board of Editors or staff. Legal Potpourri Why We are All Insurance Lawyers By Paul Kouri This article focuses primarily on the intersection of insurance law with a personal injury practice, because that intersection vividly illustrates the point, but insurance law is equally important to other practice areas. After surveying personal injury law and its connection to insurance law, the article briefly outlines some of the more obvious intersections with other practice areas – to show the current law student, newly licensed attorney, or seasoned lawyer seeking to change practice areas that each year’s bar journal insurance issue is a valuable resource and an invitation for you to join us “insurance lawyers” at the next insurance CLE. PERSONAL INJURY AND INSURANCE – LIKE PEAS AND CARROTS Personal injury and insurance law go together so well because an uninsured tort claim is generally an uncollectible tort claim. The well-rounded personal injury lawyer therefore learns how to submit and collect an insurance claim as well as how to plead – and practice into insurance coverage when litigating. The basic premise of pleading into coverage is that a petition should be drafted to trigger the duty of the defendant’s liability insurer to defend the defendant and, more importantly (for the injured party), to pay the loss. The simplest way to plead into coverage is to plead negligence as opposed to intentional acts. Such negligence may be on the part of the party who directly caused the injury, or you may need to add claims of negligence on the part of some other party or entity who should have prevented the harm. The reason we generally plead negligence is that intentional acts are (for the most part) not insurable acts. So while it can look sexy to the client when we allege that their motor vehicle accident was an aggressive act of road rage, that sounds very much like an uninsurable intentional act.1 Usually the better practice will be to plead negligence – even gross negligence – as such conduct is insurable conduct.2 The devastating consequences of drunk driving, by contrast to the road rage cases, are usually considered accidental (or gross negligence) such that allegations and proof of drunk driving will not prevent insurance coverage.3 But these are the subtle distinctions learned along the way of your personal injury practice as that practice rubs against the realities of insurance law. But what about claiming that the consequences of an intentional act were unintended and thus were insurable acts? While it used to be that the concept of transferred intent from criminal law had no place in Oklahoma insurance law,4 the modern rule is that the natural and foreseeable consequences of an intentional act cannot generally be considered “accidental” for purposes of determining insurance SOME HAVE SAID THAT INSURANCE LAW should be a required course in law school because it touches so many areas of legal practice. This article aims to convey that point: every attorney – no matter their preferred practice area – should also understand how insurance affects their practice.
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