Emerging Trends

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When I started in this business (yikes, a long time ago), we used to argue with insurance companies a lot about scintillating issues like whether environmental cleanup costs constituted “damages” under CGL policies, and whether “sudden” meant “abrupt” for purposes of the pollution exclusion. In fact, many coverage lawyers have sent their kids to college…

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…

At the end of this month (January 26, to be exact), assuming that the Mayans remain incorrect, I’ll be doing a presentation to the New Jersey Institute for Continuing Legal Education on the topic of insurance coverage for cyberthreats.  Of course, I probably should be disqualified from making any comments whatsoever about trends in computer-related…

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…

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…

Here’s a fairly frequent scenario in the insurance world.  The carrier takes a “no- pay” position on a liability claim.  The policyholder settles the case and then seeks reimbursement from the carrier in a coverage suit.  What exactly does the policyholder have to prove in order to get paid?  

In Fireman’s Fund v. Security Ins.

In State Automobile Mutual Ins. Co. v. Flexdar, the Indiana Supreme Court has just held that the so-called “absolute” pollution exclusion contained in general liability insurance policies from 1986 forward is ambiguous and unenforceable.  The Court basically found that the exclusion does not define “pollutant” with sufficient specificity, and that, read literally, the exclusion…