Hunton Insurance Recovery Blog

As the first in a series of webinars that Hunton’s higher education and insurance teams will present this fall, this program will examine D&O, educators legal liability, and related management liability insurance coverages designed to protect colleges, universities, institutions, and the trustees, officers, and administrators who run them.

As artificial intelligence rapidly transforms HR processes, hiring algorithms, and workplace management, businesses and corporate executives face unprecedented legal exposure. Join Michael Levine and Katherine Deegan for an insightful, cross-collaborative discussion on AI risk from both labor and employment and insurance coverage perspectives.

Related-claims disputes are a recurring feature of insurance coverage litigation, and the consequences can be substantial. A determination that two matters are related can shift a claim into or out of the policy period, altering coverage entirely. Although those disputes often involve fact-specific questions, the coverage outcome also depends on the applicable policy language. Urena v. Travelers Casualty and Surety Company of America, 2026 WL 2322160 (1st Cir. Aug. 11, 2026) underscores this point and offers significant guidance for policyholders navigating related-claims issues.

Congratulations to Hunton insurance coverage associate Jae Lynn (JL) Huckaba for being selected to the Miami-Dade Bar’s 2026 Circle of Excellence for Insurance Law.

They say lightning never strikes the same place twice, but for two policyholders who were burglarized in back-to-back years, it did, and a simple paperwork mix-up may have cost them their insurance coverage.  Their complaint alleges that Lemonade, their insurer, unfairly denied claims from a 2025 burglary because receipts that had been submitted with a 2024 burglary claim were inadvertently submitted again.  

The complaint raises interesting questions about how insurers detect fraud and the appropriate approach when discrepancies are identified.  What responsibility do insurers have to further investigate and allow the policyholder to explain?  These questions will become increasingly important the more that parties rely on AI in connection with insurance claims, increasing the likelihood that potential errors blossom into coverage disputes.

The complaint can be found here.

Listeria is a bacterium that can infect humans and cause intestinal illness and other harm. So when might listeria not qualify as a “communicable disease” under an insurance policy? According to a federal court in Oregon, the answer may turn on an exclusion for “any infectious and/or contagious disease[.]” (emphasis added). In Scottsdale Insurance Co. v. Bruce Packing Co., the policy’s use of the conjunctive and disjunctive “and/or” rendered the exclusion ambiguous and, thus, inapplicable to a lawsuit alleging bodily injury from listeria.

The decision is a useful reminder that coverage exclusions and limitations must be written clearly and precisely and that a failure to do so may render them inapplicable.

When does an act constitute a “professional service”? A recent Sixth Circuit decision applying Kentucky law held that the answer to that question lies in the service itself, and not the context or circumstances surrounding its use.

In Scottsdale Insurance Co. v. Seven Counties Services, Inc., No. 25-5806 (6th Cir. Sept. 9, 2026), a behavioral care center sought coverage under a commercial general liability policy after it was sued following the death of a minor resident who choked while being restrained by workers. Although the care center argued that its employees’ use of the restraint was improper and inconsistent with their training, the court concluded that the restraint was an excluded “professional service” because it involved specialized training and the exercise of judgment, and was subject to state regulation.

The decision illustrates the potential breadth of professional services exclusions and highlights the need for policyholders to consider the scope of the services they provide, especially when those services carry a risk of injury, in building a liability insurance program.

Special counsel Lorelie (Lorie) Masters was recently appointed as the chair of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession. Established in 1987, the Commission was created to assess the status of women in the legal sector and remove barriers to their professional advancement. As chair, Lorie will lead a 12-member roster of commissioners, and a panel of special advisers, dedicated to ensuring equal participation and systemic equity for women lawyers across the justice system and pursuing various studies to identify issues uniquely facing women in the profession, including disparate treatment, training and recruitment, parenting, and other issues. Most recently, the Commission in late July 2026 issued a groundbreaking study about issues affecting the mental health and well-being of women lawyers.

The recent wave of "rogue AI" incidents should be a wake-up call for every business leader and risk manager paying attention.

Recent accounts document a sobering reality: AI systems from multiple leading AI developers have each escaped controlled testing environments and caused real-world harm—compromising outside infrastructure, exploiting third-party vulnerabilities, and even canceling another person's reservation to help a user jump a waitlist. These aren't hypotheticals from a sci-fi movie. They happened this summer.

“Loss or damage.” “Caused by or resulting from.” “Faulty, inadequate or defective.” “Direct physical loss of or damage to.”

In coverage litigation, phrases like these can launch a familiar argument: if an insurance policy uses two different words, each must mean something different. Otherwise, one of them is surplusage.

That argument can have force. But it does not always carry the day. As the Supreme Court cautioned in Rimini Street, Inc. v. Oracle USA, Inc., surplusage is an interpretive clue, not a trump card. The Court explained that where one interpretation would create redundancy and another would avoid it, that difference “can supply a clue as to the better interpretation,” but “only a clue,” because “[s]ometimes the better overall reading” “contains some redundancy.” 586 U.S. 334, 346 (2019).