Contract construction

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I confess:  I sometimes wonder whether some claims personnel have ever heard of the “red face” test.  In other words, you should only take a negotiating position if it doesn’t actually cause you to blush.  Otherwise, how could seemingly rational people contend that buying “expanded” coverage means that the policyholder has no coverage?  (And how…

Insurance claims personnel have a natural, probably genetic, aversion to certain topics.  One of them is insurance coverage for “advertising injury.”  So, if your advertising injury claim is in any way unusual, chances are that as a policyholder you’re going to run into trouble with your carrier.

Some brief background:  Commercial general liability policies typically…

There’s a funny (perhaps unintentionally so) website called The Robing Room, on which lawyers rate judges in various categories.  The site is funny mostly because, from reading the reviews, you can generally predict who won and who lost a case before that particular judge.  Take, for example, Judge Joseph F. Bianco of the Eastern District…

Claims-made policies were supposed to simplify things.  In an article a few years back, insurance expert Fred Fisher noted that the idea behind such policies was to provide greater actuarial certainty for insurance companies, by ensuring that there would be no more claim activity following the end of a policy period (eliminating the “incurred…

Large first-party property damage cases often come down to a battle of accountants.  In other words, unlike Olympic beach volleyball, they’re usually not particularly thrilling to watch.  (Not that I have anything against accountants.)  But the results of the battle can have a major impact on the policyholder’s balance sheet.  How is the policyholder’s claim…

One of the issues that frequently comes up in complicated third-party cases is:  How far outside the underlying complaint does the carrier have to go to determine whether coverage exists?  New Jersey is not an “eight corners” state (in which all the court considers is the four corners of the policy and the four corners…

Let’s say you own a factory building.   Construction activity on an adjacent lot causes damage to the structure.  You have the standard first-party property insurance policy providing coverage for “direct physical loss or damage,” and the policy gives the carrier the option of paying either the “cost of repair” or “loss of value.”  If the carrier…

Those of us who represent contractors in coverage disputes have had to wrestle a lot over the past few years with so-called “business risk” exclusions, such as the “your work” and “your product” exclusions.  Cynicism may be unhealthy, but the cynic in me says that insurance companies are twisting these exclusions far beyond their intended…