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
Emerging Trends
The “Wrongful Acts” Exclusion and the Duty to Defend
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…
Toughening New Jersey’s bad faith law
If an insurance company wrongfully denies a third-party liability claim, then, under the New Jersey Court Rules (R. 4:42-9(a)(6), to be exact), if the policyholder has to sue to enforce coverage for the claim, the policyholder is entitled to recover its attorneys’ fees. Due to a weird quirk in the Court Rules, however, a…
Insurance coverage for cyberliability
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…
Crime Policies and Computer Fraud Coverage
Can a first-party insurance policy ever provide coverage for third-party loss? Well…that depends on what the policy actually says, which goes back to the first rule of all coverage work: Read The Policy. (Corollary rule: Assumptions Are The Mother of All Foulups.)
Here are the facts from a very recent case decided by the U.S.
The “Eight Corners” Rule and the Duty to Defend
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…
What is an “occurrence”?
When I started in this business at Anderson Kill back in the 1980s (when the firm was still Anderson Russell Kill & Olick, P.C.), junior lawyers (including me) would do anything, and I mean anything, to keep from sliding into the abyss known as the Insurance Coverage Group. Who wanted to while away his or…
Business Risk Exclusions
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…
Coverage for class action settlements
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.
The “Absolute” Pollution Exclusion
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…