It’s apt to name a blog post after one of history’s great action movies when the case involves a “conceptual artillery duel” that “ends in a draw,” and that is exactly how U.S. District Judge Gerald Austin McHugh Jr. of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania described the parties’ conflicting textual interpretations in KMS Development Partners LP v. Federal Insurance Co. Keep reading to find out why the insured’s hyper-technical interpretation of the phrase “Forgery or ... Keep Reading »
Criminal Acts
Third Circuit Holds Assault or Battery Exclusion Bars Coverage for Sex Trafficking Claims
In Nautilus Insurance Co. v. Motel Management Services Inc., the Third Circuit Court of Appeals held that a commercial general liability policy’s assault or battery exclusion barred coverage for claims involving alleged sex trafficking. Motel Management was a declaratory judgment action filed by an insurer against its insured, a motel, under a CGL policy issued by the insurer to the motel. The policy provided defense and indemnity coverage for certain bodily injury ... Keep Reading »
No Coverage Under Cybercrime Endorsement for Florida Fraudulent Wire Transfer
In Star Title Partners of Palm Harbor LLC v. Illinois Union Insurance Co., the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed judgment for the insurer and held that coverage did not exist under the plain language of a cybersecurity policy’s cybercrime endorsement for a Florida title company that was fraudulently induced to wire funds to the account of a fraudster impersonating a mortgage lender. In summer 2019, Star Title was hired by a homeowner to facilitate the sale of ... Keep Reading »
Eleventh Circuit Holds Tort Claimants Lack Standing to Challenge Judgment That Insurer Has No Duty to Defend
On March 29, 2022, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that a tort claimant lacks standing to challenge a court's judgment finding that the carrier had no duty to defend the insured. A.B. was 10 years old when she was sexually abused by her parent and her parent's spouse. The spouse was ultimately indicted, pleaded guilty to two counts of human trafficking, and was sentenced to 30 years in prison per count. In her suit against the convicted human trafficker ... Keep Reading »
Beware the Honest Hacker: Indiana Supreme Court Finds That Bitcoin Payment Is Not Necessarily Covered Loss Under Commercial Crime Policy Because Not Every Ransomware Attack Involves Fraud
In G&G Oil Company of Indiana Inc. v. Continental Western Insurance Co., the Indiana Supreme Court considered the emerging area of computer crime coverage. G&G Oil was insured under a multi-peril commercial common insurance policy by Continental that provided commercial crime coverage. Specifically, the policy provided the following coverage provision: We will pay for loss or damage to "money," "securities" and "other property" resulting directly from the use ... Keep Reading »
Texas Federal Court Finds No Coverage Under Crime Policy for Phishing Scheme Because Insured Did Not “Hold” Diverted Funds and Suffered No Direct Loss
RealPage was the victim of a phishing scheme that resulted in the diversion of its client funds from the bank account of a third-party payment processer, Stripe Inc. In the ensuing insurance coverage litigation styled RealPage Inc. v. National Union Fire Insurance Company of Pittsburgh, the court ultimately concluded that RealPage was not entitled to coverage for its loss because RealPage did not “hold” the diverted funds and because RealPage did not suffer a direct loss ... Keep Reading »
Ninth Circuit Applies Willful Violation of Law Exclusion in Professional Liability Policy To Preclude Coverage for Wrongful Death Lawsuit Stemming From Doctor’s Unlawful Distribution of Fentanyl
In National Fire & Marine Insurance Company v. Hampton, No. 19-17235 (9th Cir. Oct. 21, 2020), the Ninth Circuit held that a doctor’s guilty plea to the unlawful distribution of a controlled substance barred insurance coverage under his professional liability policy for a subsequent wrongful death lawsuit resulting from a patient’s overdose. According to the Ninth Circuit, the doctor’s admission that he intentionally distributed fentanyl clearly implicated the ... Keep Reading »
Shot Through the Heart, But the Excess Carrier Isn’t to Blame: Georgia Federal Court Finds Policy’s Broad Firearms Exclusion Bars Coverage
On June 1, 2017, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia granted summary judgment in favor of AIG Specialty Insurance Co. in a case involving the application of the firearms exclusion in Powe v. Chartis Specialty Insurance Co., No. 1:16-CV-01336. The court dismissed the case, in which claimant Christopher Powe sought the remaining $3 million of a $4 million settlement against the insureds, property management company HMI Property Solutions, Inc. ... Keep Reading »
Drive, He Said: When “Yes” Means “Don’t Shoot!”
Bad things can happen to innocent people, and sometimes the people responsible for them are judgment-proof. When that happens—and when the perpetrator also has potential coverage under an automobile or homeowners policy—victims sometimes view the circumstances of their injury more generously; they describe them with words like "careless" and "negligent" in place of harsh, judgmental terms, such as "intentional" or "criminal." Something of this sort seems to have been ... Keep Reading »
The Meth Business is Dangerous; (En)trust No One
For a landlord, it’s a bad day when your tenant gets busted for operating a meth lab, and the local authorities condemn your house because it’s contaminated with the byproducts of his business. It’s even worse when you learn there is no coverage for the cost of cleaning up the contamination. Neighborhood Investments, LLC, leased a house in Louisville, Kentucky, to a Mr. Kenneth McCormick. As neighborhood investments go, this was not a winner. Mr. McCormick was ... Keep Reading »