An insured corporation settles a class action, and a portion of the settlement pays the plaintiffs’ attorneys. Payments to the class are excluded from coverage under the terms of the corporation’s liability policy. But can the company still get coverage for the attorneys’ fees? In April, this blog discussed a case in which the answer turned on the nature of the company’s underlying conduct. The following month, in PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. v. Houston Casualty ... Keep Reading »
General Liability
Colorado Takes A Stand Against Unauthorized Settlements
The “notice-prejudice” rule gives a pass to policyholders who breach the notice or cooperation provisions of their policies, if the breach is found not to have prejudiced the insurer. Sometimes, the late notice does not arrive until after the policyholder has settled an underlying claim; even in those cases—and even where the policy contains a “no voluntary payments” or a “consent-to-settle” clause—dozens of cases have found that the notice-prejudice rule applies. Last ... Keep Reading »
How General is “General Aggregate?”
“It’s a big enough umbrella, but it’s always me that ends up getting wet.” - Sting (1981) “Here’s a second umbrella” – Montana Supreme Court (2016) Although the terms are often used interchangeably, there are several key differences between umbrella and excess coverage. One such distinction is that an umbrella policy can apply to multiple underlying policies. This makes it essential to clearly delineate and define the policy’s aggregate limit of liability— the maximum ... Keep Reading »
No Contractor Is An Island: Florida Court Narrowly Applies “Your Work” Exclusion
When an insurer issues a Commercial General Liability policy to a contractor, the policy typically excludes coverage for the cost of repairing or replacing the contractor's own defective work, but covers the cost of repairing damage to other parts of the property which the defective component might cause. As this blog has explained, the "your work" exclusion serves to distinguish a liability policy from "a performance bond or warranty of a contractor's product." But ... Keep Reading »
As TCPA Class Actions Soar, Issues Emerge in TCPA Coverage for Claims
Both the number of cases under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and the types of practices that those cases challenge have mushroomed within the last several years. Yet a dedicated form of insurance against TCPA claims has not yet developed. Instead, businesses seeking defense and indemnification of TCPA suits have resorted to traditional policy provisions dealing with property damage, personal and advertising injury, and (more recently) the language of ... Keep Reading »
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 »
Additional Insureds Deserve Attention Too: New York Court Finds Insurer’s Reservation of Rights to Named Insured Did Not Constitute Notice to Additional Insured Under § 3420(d)(2)
Liability insurers issuing or delivering policies in New York are well apprised of the statutory requirement that the insured is to be provided written notice of a disclaimer or denial of a bodily injury or death claim “as soon as is reasonably possible.” N.Y. Ins. Law § 3420(d)(2). Also well-known is that an insurer may face severe consequences from delaying issuance of a disclaimer on a ground that is known to be valid, while still investigating other possible grounds ... 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 »
McCarran-Ferguson Lands a Jab on the FAA
As we reported in this space late last year, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, 131 S.Ct. 1740, 1745 (2011), tilted the scales toward federal power in the field of arbitration, preempting state laws that may stand in the way of enforcing arbitration agreements pursuant to the Federal Arbitration Act ( "FAA"). Naturally, this left the McCarran-Ferguson Act spoiling for a fight, given its restoration to the states of all power to ... Keep Reading »
Third Circuit Decides that “Publication” Doesn’t Include the Collection of Customer Data
On September 15, 2015, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals declared that Lamorak Insurance Company (formerly OneBeacon America Insurance Company) and the Hanover Insurance Group don't have to defend their insureds, Urban Outfitters, Inc. and its subsidiary Anthropologie, Inc., under "personal and advertising injury" coverage in three putative class action lawsuits challenging the stores' collection of customer zip codes. The putative class actions are in the District ... Keep Reading »
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