Maryland’s highest court adopts pro rata allocation for asbestos-related bodily injury claims under liability policies. The court began by explaining that injury spanning many years often implicates multiple policies and, therefore, implicates a continuous or injury-in-fact trigger under Maryland law. Adopting the reasoning of
Mayor & City Council of Baltimore v. Utica Mutual Ins. Co., 802 A.2d 1070 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 2002)
, app. dismissed, 821 A.2d 369 (Md. 2003), it rejected joint and several allocation because of its “poor fit” under the policy language:
[T]he pro rata approach is unmistakably consistent with the language of standard CGL policies. Indeed, “there is no logic to support the notion that one single insurance policy among 20 or 30 years worth of policies could be expected to be held liable for the entire time period.” …Consistent with the policy language limiting coverage to that which occurs “during the policy period,” the timing of the injury di
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Almost 1,500 lawsuits have been filed by policyholders against insurers, seeking to resolve disputes around insurance coverage for COVID-19-related business losses.
For those unfamiliar with insurance litigation trends, it’s important to put the scale of this into perspective. The average hurricane will result in about 50 to 100 cases being filed in the first year; from April till August 2020 we saw the same quantity of cases being filed
each week for COVID-19-related losses.
So far, rulings have been made overwhelming in the favor of insurers, at a rate of approximately 75%. However, there have been some significant rulings in favor of policyholders over the last few months which should cause insurers pause for thought.
Year in Review: Top Insurance Cases of 2020 Thursday, January 28, 2021
Not surprisingly, COVID-19 business interruption insurance disputes dominated media headlines for most of 2020. Nonetheless, there were a number of other insurance rulings that will undoubtedly shape the coverage landscape. Policyholders enjoyed a number of significant wins including significant victories related to COVID-19 business interruption cases. The start of a new year gives us an opportunity to highlight some of 2020’s most notable coverage decisions.
COVID-19 Business Interruption
Insurance companies’ widespread blanket denials of policyholders’ claims for business interruption due to COVID-19 for companies ranging in size from small mom-and-pop shops to large retailers prompted a flood of litigation in both state and federal courts. Although 2021 shows promise for gaining control over the disease, the resulting insurance disputes are certain to remain center stage. While insurers ma
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U.K. high court extends reach of business interruption coverage for policy holders – What do U.S. insurers need to know? Tuesday, January 26, 2021
Last week, the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling (the “Judgment”) analyzing the extent to which business interruption coverage applies to losses caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and resulting government restrictions. In a ruling that bucked the trend of most American decisions on the topic, the U.K. Supreme Court found that some losses caused by COVID-19 and consequent local or national restrictions should be covered by business interruption coverage.
The FCA Ruling
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Our initial alert highlighted various hospitality and service industry businesses suing their insurers to recover for losses arising out of closure and stay-at-home (Civil Authority) orders. Since then, thousands more individual and class action coverage actions have been filed seeking business interruption coverage as a result of Covid-19. This article assesses how these new actions have fared thus far.
The class action cases generally allege one of two theories to support claims for business income losses. Many of the class plaintiffs have alleged that the forced closure of business operations by state and local governments (civil authorities) was sufficient to support a claim, without a showing of damage to covered property. Most of these claims have been decided in favor of the insurer defendants, resulting in dismissals of the initial complaints.