I’ve been a trial lawyer for over 30 years, and I think I need to point out that corporate/transactional lawyers aren’t real lawyers.  If you haven’t been on the receiving end of an evidence ruling that makes you wonder whether the judge attended law school in a Winnebago, then I’m sorry, you may be a “practitioner,” but you’re not a real lawyer. On the other hand, corporate/transactional lawyers…er, practitioners…are way, way smarter than we litigators are. They have to understand things like complicated tax laws and how to structure complex commercial deals, which is generally far above our pay grade.  Most of us became trial lawyers because we can’t do math.

In structuring transactions, one issue that sometimes comes up is whether insurance claims, or insurance policies, can be assigned to another party. This issue also occasionally arises in the litigation context, when a plaintiff may be willing to settle a case in exchange for the assignment of the defendant’s insurance claim with its carrier.  (That may include an assignment of the bad faith claim, if any.)

Warning:  Assignments can be tricky.  But, while insurance companies may attempt to disclaim coverage based upon any assignment of a policy or claim, in general, the assignment has to increase the carrier’s risk in order to provide a valid basis for denial of a claim.

The New Jersey Appellate Division recently considered the implications of an assignment in Haskell Properties, LLC v. American Ins. Co.  The case involved certain insurance companies’ refusal to provide coverage for the cleanup of a contaminated property that Haskell had acquired in an asset sale approved by the bankruptcy court. The carriers argued “no pay,” in part because (according to them) any assignment was invalid since Haskell did not obtain the consent of the insurance companies beforehand.

The Appellate Division first considered Section 541 of the Bankruptcy Code, which defines property that is considered part of the debtor’s estate. Haskell argued that the Bankruptcy Code preempted any contractual provision that attempted to limit or restrict the rights of the debtor to transfer or assign its interests in bankruptcy. The Court held: “Section 541 effectively preempts any contractual provision that purports to limit or restrict the rights of a debtor to transfer or assign its interests in bankruptcy.” But, “it does not govern transfers to third parties from the estate approved by the bankruptcy court under 11 USCA §363, as was the case here”. According to the court, “there is no provision under Section 363 that authorizes the trustee to sell property in violation of state law transfer restrictions.”

So, the Court ruled that insurance companies did not have to cover losses that occurred after a policy was assigned in contravention of a consent-to-assignment clause. If a policy prohibits assignment, and the insurance company does not consent to assignment of the policy…it’s a no go for the policyholder.

These prohibitions do not apply to claims that accrued before the assignment, however. The Court wrote: “The Seller’s claims for coverage under the policies relating to occurrences that happened before the transfer to plaintiff were freely assignable by the Seller, to the extent the policies were ‘occurrence policies.’ Those policies insure ‘the occurrence itself,’ and provide coverage ‘once the occurrence takes place…even though the claim on may not been made for some time thereafter.’”  (Emphasis mine; citations omitted.)

The key is whether, by virtue of the assignment, the risk to the carrier increased. According to the Court, “no-assignment [provisions within insurance policies] do not prevent the assignment after loss for the obvious reason that the clause by its own terms ordinarily prohibits the assignment of the policy, as distinguished from a claim arising thereunder, and the assignment before loss involves a transfer of a contractual relationship while the assignment after loss is the assignment of the right to a money claim…The purpose behind a no-assignment clause is to protect the insurer from having to provide coverage for risk different from what the insurer had intended…once the insurer’s liability has become fixed due to a loss, an assignment of rights to collect under insurance policies is not a transfer of the actual policy but a transfer of a right to a claim of money.”

Bottom line:  assignment of the policy generally requires the consent of the carrier.  Assignment of an existing claim, not so much.

You can read the full Haskell decision by clicking here.