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 Bond Safeguard Ins. Co. v. National Union Fire Ins. Co. of Pittsburgh, Pa., No. 14-15233 (11th Cir. Oct. 5, 2015), appear to have had this goal in mind when they sought to recover payments it had made under certain surety bonds. The plaintiffs sued for negligence, but ... Keep Reading »
Declaratory Judgment
Wall-to-Wall Ads: Florida Court’s Broad Definition of “Advertisement” Expands Scope of Advertising Injury Coverage
“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 misappropriation of intellectual property. Because trademark infringement injures plaintiffs in a different way, trademark claims are generally excluded from coverage—except where the insured has used an infringing text or trade dress in an advertisement. That wrinkle makes it ... Keep Reading »
“Contractor?” I Do Not Think That Employers’ Liability Exclusion Means What You Think It Means
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 insureds. As the leaves started to turn, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit put an employer's exclusion under a similar microscope. In United States Liab. Ins. Co. v. Benchmark Constr. Svcs., Inc., No. 14-1832 (1st Cir. Aug. 12, 2015), a case arising out of a home ... Keep Reading »
Accrual to be Kind: Pennsylvania Appellate Court Addresses Statute of Limitations for Declaratory Claim
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. Hospitality Group Svcs, Inc., No. 1430 WDA 2015 (Pa. Super. Ct. July 7, 2015), the court determined that an insurer’s responsibility to commence a timely action for declaratory relief in a coverage dispute begins to toll when the insurer has a factual basis sufficient to allow it ... Keep Reading »
California 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 Accident & Indemnity Co., 29 Cal.4th 934 (2003), the court held that such provisions are fully enforceable, until a claim against the insured has been reduced to either a judgment or a settlement. The latest case, Fluor Corporation v. Superior Court, No. S205889 (Cal. ... Keep Reading »
For “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 faith litigation. One difficulty arises in states that enforce a presumption against the privilege in bad faith suits. In many cases, insurers need to waive the privilege, to assert a defense based on advice of counsel. Last month, a federal court in South Carolina ... Keep Reading »
Who’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 policies do provide coverage to additional insured parties, such as lenders or property owners, that deal with the business. Recently, in Mutual Benefit Ins. Co. v. Politsopoulos, No. 60 MAP 2014 (Penn. May 26, 2015), the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania addressed the question ... Keep Reading »
Looking Backward: West Virginia Retroactively Imposes Coverage for Faulty Workmanship
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 usually whether the defect in workmanship is an "occurrence" within the meaning of a policy; the answer can depend on which court you ask or how those courts deal with other policy terms. In 2013, West Virginia's highest court overruled its own precedents to hold that CGL ... Keep Reading »
Playing with House Money: Fifth Circuit Holds that Home Designs Can Constitute Advertisements
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, Courts can make this job far more difficult. For example, a recent Fifth Circuit decision held that a copyright infringement exclusion did not apply to exclude coverage for a judgment against the insured in a case alleging, well, copyright infringement. In Mid-Continent ... Keep Reading »
Insurance is Big in Texas: In Deepwater Horizon Case, Texas Stretches a Policy’s Four Corners to Include Other Contracts
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 Horizon drilling rig had made BP an additional insured under its liability policies, but it did so pursuant to a drilling contract in which BP had agreed to be responsible for some of the losses those policies covered. When BP submitted a claim, therefore, a court had to ... Keep Reading »
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