Apartment Complexity: Appellate Court Sorts Out Multiple Coverage Claims for...
In QBE Ins. Corp. v. Adjo Contracting Corp. (N.Y. App. Div. 2d Dep’t Oct. 29, 2014), an intermediate appellate court in New York confronted cross-appeals involving 15 different insurers embroiled in...
View ArticlePartial Recall: Product Contamination Coverage Has Its Limits
In disputes over the scope of liability coverage, courts must often draw a line between (1) providing insurance against errors that harm others and (2) broadly guaranteeing the work product of the...
View ArticleCarhops and Cash Deposit Bags: Insurer Skates From the “Dual Purpose” Doctrine
For many, Sonic Drive-In restaurants stir thoughts of juicy burgers, neon-blue sodas, ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll, and roller-skating carhops. Recently, however, in Hudson Specialty Insurance Company v. Brash...
View ArticleNew York District Court Rejects Excess Carrier’s Attempt to Stack Primary...
Cases involving continuous exposure present unique challenges. Determining when the alleged injury occurred is critical in evaluating causation, damages, and statute of limitations defenses. The date...
View ArticleA DJ is a Sometime Thing: In Declaratory Judgment Actions Over Coverage, the...
The Declaratory Judgment Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2201, gives federal district courts “unique and substantial discretion” over whether to hear suits seeking a declaration of rights. Wilton v. Seven Falls Co.,...
View ArticleConnecticut Insurers Get a Day in Court to Resolve Regulatory Investigations
As Hillary Clinton can attest,some government investigations tend to drag on, and they create problems for their targets as long as they last. In late 2011, the targets of a lingering investigation by...
View ArticleInsurance is Big in Texas: In Deepwater Horizon Case, Texas Stretches a...
Last month, in In re Deepwater Horizon, Relator, the Supreme Court of Texas applied a fundamental principle of insurance law to a case with enormous financial implications. The owner of the Deepwater...
View ArticlePlaying with House Money: Fifth Circuit Holds that Home Designs Can...
Insurers – who bear the burden of crafting unambiguous policy language defining the contours of coverage – constantly face difficulty in attempting to predict unexpected liability. And sometimes,...
View ArticleStriking Down Regulation On Replacement Cost Estimates, A California Court...
Last week, in Association of California Ins. Cos. v. Jones, B238622 (Cal. Ct. App. Apr. 8, 2015), a California appellate court affirmed a decision that invalidated a regulation governing estimates of...
View ArticleLooking Backward: West Virginia Retroactively Imposes Coverage for Faulty...
A notorious moving target in the field of coverage litigation is an insurer’s responsibility under a commercial general liability policy for the policyholder’s faulty workmanship. The key question is...
View ArticleWho’s the Boss? In Policies Covering Multiple Insureds, the Details Matter
Liability policies for businesses are subject to a number of common exclusions; many, for example, do not cover liability to employees of the business who are injured on the job. Frequently, those...
View ArticleFor “At-Issue Waiver,” The Best Defense May Not Be An Affirmative Defense
Silence is argument carried out by other means. –Ernesto “Che” Guevara As this blog has repeatedly documented, it can be hard for insurers to assert the attorney-client privilege in the context of bad...
View ArticleCalifornia Declares New Rules for Assignment of Long Tail Claims
Last week, in a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court of California changed the law governing anti-assignment provisions in liability insurance policies. Twelve years ago, in Henkel Corp. v. Hartford...
View ArticleAccrual to be Kind: Pennsylvania Appellate Court Addresses Statute of...
A Pennsylvania appeals court recently addressed a nuanced procedural question: the applicable statute of limitations in a declaratory action of a coverage dispute. In Selective Way Ins. Co. v....
View ArticleCancel My Reservation! Pennsylvania Sows Confusion Over Consent-to-Settle...
This summer, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania addressed an important question that has divided other courts: if an insurer defends a claim subject to a reservation of rights, may the insured settle...
View Article“Contractor?” I Do Not Think That Employers’ Liability Exclusion Means What...
Over the summer, this blog reported on how the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania managed to parse an employer’s liability exclusion to find that it did not exclude claims by employees of additional...
View ArticleWall-to-Wall Ads: Florida Court’s Broad Definition of “Advertisement” Expands...
“Advertising injury” can be tricky. In theory, the term applies to the type of harm that can be inflicted through advertising media—defamation, disparagement, violation of privacy rights or...
View ArticleArise and Exclude: Artful Pleading Fails to Circumvent Contractual Liability...
Awake, arise or be forever fall’n. – John Milton It’s not uncommon for plaintiffs to couch their pleadings in terms that attempt to avoid exclusions in defendants’ liability coverage. The plaintiffs in...
View ArticleAfter Pit Bull Case, Questions Dog New York’s “Unfortunate Event” Test
Where an insurance policy contains a “per occurrence” limit on coverage, New York courts apply what they call the “unfortunate event” test to determine how many “occurrences” are involved in a given...
View ArticleWhen is a Fellow Employee a “Fellow Employee”?
The Eleventh Circuit recently reversed a district court’s decision to enforce an insurance policy’s “fellow employee” exclusion on the ground that the employee was acting outside the scope of his...
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