The Effects of the California Wildfires Continue
1/7/19
By: Matthew Jones The California Insurance Commissioner recently issued a press release regarding the extensive insured losses from the numerous California wildfires. Those losses total over $9 billion, and are even expected to rise. The losses span across various lines of insurance coverage, including commercial, residential, personal and commercial vehicles, and agricultural, to name a…
Court Rules No Coverage For Pa. Law Firm's Malpractice Suit
11/26/18
By: Barry Brownstein An insurer does not have to cover a Pennsylvania law firm in a professional malpractice suit that a client filed after the firm allegedly used privileged information to benefit its attorneys’ side business in a real estate development. The United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania granted Westport Insurance…
The Bad Faith Trap: Evidentiary Concerns In Defending “Failure To Settle” Claims
10/19/18
By: Phil Savrin It is commonly known in our industry that even an insurer that has accepted coverage for a liability claim can nevertheless be exposed to liability beyond the limits of the policy if it fails to settle the claim. The reason for this rule is that an insurer’s contractual agreement to protect the…
Is Georgia Game for Growing Bad Faith Liability?
7/17/18
By: Jessica Samford As discussed in my last blog on bad faith, seeking bifurcation can be a proactive means to distinguish the issue of coverage from the issue of bad faith and appropriately manage the all too often unwieldy discovery process before it’s too late. A recent case in Georgia is an interesting illustration of…
Court Ruling Highlights Importance of Policy Language
4/11/18
By: America Vidana In Mt. Hawley Insurance Co. v. Tactic Security Enforcement, Inc., No. 6:16-cv-01425 (M.D. FL. 2018), U.S. District Judge Paul Byron of the Middle District of Florida recently denied an insurance company’s motion for summary judgment, in which it relied on an exclusion to deny coverage to its policyholder. The policyholder and restaurant…
1/29/18
By: Rebecca J. Smith A California Appellate Court recently ruled that an insurer was entitled to a prejudgment attachment on the property of its insured when the insurer provided what the court deemed to be ample evidence to support its argument that an exclusion in a policy barred coverage under the intentional non-compliance exclusion. Allied…
1/24/18
By: Seth F. Kirby On January 22, 2018 a Tesla Model S slammed into a parked fire truck on California’s 405 near Culver City. The driver of the Tesla stated that prior to the accident he had the car’s autopilot system engaged. This is just the most recent in a series of accidents in which…
11/16/17
By: Richard E. Wirick This blog, second in a series of three, deals with coverage issues arising from fire losses in the first party context which do not deal with dwelling replacement cost (loss settlement) disputes. The two main areas of remaining first party issues are (1) business interruption and (2) ingress/egress. A. Loss…
Mixed Ruling for Penn State Insurer as New Allegations Surface in Jerry Sandusky Coverage Case
7/13/16
By: Bill Buechner Approximately 4 years ago, former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was convicted on 45 counts of child sexual abuse arising out of the molestation of 10 boys over a period of 15 years. Sandusky was sentenced to a minimum of 30 years. He has appealed these convictions, and his appeal is…
The Pitfall of Coverage by Estoppel in Georgia
6/7/12
By: Philip W. Savrin
The Supreme Court of Georgia swept aside many decades of case law recently when it decided that an insurer cannot rely on policy provisions to deny coverage if it defends its insured without reserving its rights. Before the World Harvest decision, the cases seemed to require that the insured had to show that