A Blast From the Past and Remembering NAPIA’s Paul Cordish

Eight years ago today,  I wrote the following post: NAPIA Annual Meetings and Celebrating My First Public Adjuster Speech 30 Years Ago.SinceNAPIA will be holding its annual meeting this week in Nashville, Tennessee, I thought about this post, where I noted:

It is funny how thirty years in a career can seem to go like the snap of your fingers. NAPIA’s 2015 Annual Meeting is being held at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. My first NAPIA meeting was the 1985 Annual Meeting in Carmel, California. I knew few people at that meeting except for Past President Ira Sarasohn, who somehow convinced NAPIA to let a young attorney give a presentation about ‘Proofs of Loss and Examinations Under Oath.’ The only other attorneys in the room were public adjusters who no longer practiced law and NAPIA’a General Counsel, Paul Cordish.

It was not uncommon for public adjusters to be former attorneys. Cordish warned them then and always warned all public adjusters not to practice law at every State of the Public Adjusting Union speech he gave annually…

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In 1985, I was a very inexperienced insurance lawyer. The one thing I remember about the speech was Harvey Goodman grilling me with question after question. I think he was testing me to see if I knew what I was talking about. I learned that by teaching and writing, I learn far more about a topic than what I would do otherwise. After giving hundreds of speeches and presentations about property insurance law, I am much better for it.

I noted Brian Goodman in this morning’s post, NAPIA’S Good Shepherd. Goodman wrote a guest blog post about NAPIA in The History of NAPIA and Its Importance to the Public Adjusting Profession. Paul Cordish was NAPIA’s general counsel during the profession’s growth noted by Goodman. Goodman also noted that NAPIA honored Corish’s memory:

NAPIA has also throughout its history developed learned papers on relevant and hot button issues impacting public adjusting. We have issued white papers on UPPA, Appraisal, and policy terms excluding an insured’s right to hire a public adjuster. The Cordish Competition at the University of Maryland School of Law, named in honor of my predecessor, each year generates a scholarly paper in an area relevant to public adjusters. NAPIA’s own code of ethics is contained in the Model Bill and, consequently, has been enacted in numerous state public adjuster licensing statutes.

The Cordish Award site states, in part:

The Paul Cordish Memorial Foundation was established in 2006 in memory of the late NAPIA Executive Director and Counsel, Paul L. Cordish, Esq., to ensure the future of the association and the profession he nurtured and served so well.  Each year the Foundation funds a prize, award or fellowship for students at the University of Maryland School of Law who successfully compete in a writing contest or other competitive process based on criteria developed in consultation with NAPIA and approved by the law school.  Entrants in the competition may choose any topic they wish so long as it focuses on public insurance adjusting.

To enter the competition, authors must have completed the first year in the full-time or part-time program at the University of Maryland School of Law or have been accepted as a transfer student at the time of submission.  All applicants must currently be enrolled as a candidate for a J.D. degree and be in good standing at the school at the time of submission.  No paper that has been published previously in any form will be considered.

Paul Cordish has an entire Wikipedia biography that notes some of his interests and legal career outside of NAPIA:

After law school, in 1932, he founded the Cordish Law Firm and in 1933, he joined the Baltimore-based, family real estate business, the Cordish Company, founded by his father Louis Cordish in 1910. Cordish Law serves as the legal arm of Cordish Company. In 1934, Cordish was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates to represent the 4th legislative district in Baltimore City. He became the leader of what was then called the liberal bloc. From 1940 to 1941, he was the chairman of the House Committee on Intergovernmental Cooperation. He voted against the formidable lobby representing bar and saloon owners, and sought to strike out a requirement that witnesses and jurors profess belief in God. From 1963 to 1966, he served as president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. In this position, he was able to collect $3 million from the West German government for Nazi victims of the Holocaust in Baltimore. 

Paul Cordish had a major role in establishing public adjusting. His history is one all public adjusters should know of and appreciate.

Thought For An Afternoon  

The most beautiful things are not associated with money; they are memories and moments. If you don’t celebrate those, they can pass you by.

—Alek Wek