Hunton Insurance Recovery Blog

Hunton’s insurance coverage team is proud to celebrate the recognition of Andrea DeField on Benchmark Litigation’s 2026 40 & Under List, an annual ranking that highlights the nation’s leading litigators age 40 and under. Andrea was one of only six Hunton lawyers selected and was recognized in the South region. Benchmark Litigation’s 40 & Under List honors attorneys who have distinguished themselves through significant case work, client feedback, and peer review.

New Jersey has some of the strongest consumer-protection laws in the nation. The state’s courts, however, had created judicial carve-outs for professionals and semi-professionals, exempting them from liability under those laws. Those carve-outs expressly included insurance brokers, whom the courts classified as semi-professionals.

That changed in Lowe v. Audet.

The SEC’s effort to rescind its 2024 climate disclosure rules marks a significant change in federal ESG regulation, but it should not be mistaken for a retreat from climate-related disclosure risk.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s recent decision in Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance Co. v. RI Settlement Trust, No. 61 EAP 2024 (Pa. July 21, 2026), rejected three insurers’ attempts to avoid coverage for lawsuits alleging that hotel operators enabled or profited from sex trafficking based on Pennsylvania’s purported public policy against sex trafficking.

The court found that Pennsylvania had no such articulated public policy against insuring those kinds of claims and, absent an exclusion barring coverage for the alleged conduct, the insurance contract would be enforced as written. The ruling is an important reminder for policyholders that courts will enforce the agreed-upon language in policies and will not allow insurers to deny coverage by invoking insurability defenses to eliminate coverage without a clearly articulated public policy in the relevant jurisdiction.