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 and nature of the alleged occurrence is also often determinative of coverage. And as a recent decision from the Northern District of New York reminds us, the question is not only whether there is coverage in the first instance, but also which carrier has to pay. The ... Keep Reading »
Occurrence
Apartment Complexity: Appellate Court Sorts Out Multiple Coverage Claims for Construction of Uninhabitable Residence
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 multiple lawsuits, including consolidated class actions. The core issue of the case was whether the insurers for a variety of subcontractors were obligated to provide a defense to tenants' lawsuits against the developer and general contractor of a doomed residential ... Keep Reading »
New Jersey Appellate Court Keeps “Running Spigot” Open on Allocation of Defense Costs Under Non-Eroding-Limit Fronting Policies (and Other Spooky Tales from the Towers of Coverage Past)
New Jersey's Appellate Division recently affirmed each of several challenged rulings rendered in a long-running coverage dispute between plaintiff IMO Industries and its many historical insurers arising from asbestos exposure-related injuries dating back to the 1940's. IMO sought declaratory and other relief to establish IMO's and the defendant insurers' respective obligations for defense and indemnity of underlying personal injury lawsuits against IMO. Plaintiff IMO ... 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 »
Business Risk Exclusions in CGL Policies Produce a Patchwork of Decisions
On July 23 and 24, 2014, respectively, intermediate appellate courts from South Carolina and Massachusetts released opinions upholding the application of the "your work" exclusion in a commercial general liability policy against claims based on contracted work that had been performed improperly. These two decisions buttress application of the "your work" exclusion, but they also illustrate the fact that the area of business risk exclusions (which typically refers to the ... Keep Reading »
In Faulty Workmanship Cases, Insuring Clause Dogs are Wagged by Exclusion Tails
In Greystone Const., Inc. v. National Fire & Marine Ins. Co., 661 F.3d 1272, 1289 (10th Cir. 2011), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit articulated an important rule for construing commercial general liability policies: [A] CGL policy ‘begin[s] with a broad grant of coverage, w[hich is then limited in scope by exclusions. Exceptions to exclusions narrow the scope of the exclusion and . . . add back coverage. But it is the initial broad grant of ... Keep Reading »
In the Last Frontier, Insurers Shouldn’t Leave Defendants Out in the Cold
An Alaska politician once said of the folks she grew up with, "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity." But those virtues don’t exactly leap out of the story behind Williams v. Geico Cas. Co., No. S–14089 (Alaska Jan. 25, 2013), which mostly has to do with alcohol, selfishness and stupidity. At the climax of this sordid tale, a party to the lawsuit argued that an insurer’s refusal to offer policy limits for a release of only one ... Keep Reading »
Federal Court Refuses to Let Insured Shoot First, Seek Coverage Later
at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the issue has been taken up passionately by both sides of the dispute over gun violence. Did the murderers in Newtown and Aurora kill in large numbers because they were able to fire many shots quickly, and without reloading, as Sen. Lautenberg believes? Or, as a Wall Street Journal editorial recently suggested, can the proliferation of mass killings be more reasonably attributed to the practice of designating “gun-free zones” in ... Keep Reading »
The Limits of the Real: Narrow Readings of Policy Terms put Losses in a Virtual Realm
Ludwig Wittgenstein famously declared that “[t]he world is everything that is the case.” In three recent cases involving liability policies, courts remind us that injury can occur beyond the limits of the world that consists of “property”—or even of “substance.” 1. PPI Technology Services, L.P., was hired to “assist in well-planning” on three oil leases in Boudreaux, Louisiana. Its responsibilities included overseeing the drilling of wells. When PPI dug an empty ... Keep Reading »