Hunton Insurance Recovery Blog

Hunton & Williams Insurance Recovery partner, Michael Levine, was quoted in an August 29, 2017 article appearing in Business Insurance, regarding the rapid increase in lawsuits, and insurance issues, surrounding concussions in high school and college sports.  Among other things, the article discusses a coverage lawsuit filed by Great American Assurance Company against Conference USA in federal court in Dallas, Texas.  In the lawsuit, the insurer alleges that its policy did not afford coverage for football concussion injuries because the policy included a “limited event coverage endorsement,” which limited bodily injury coverage to a list of sports that apparently did not include football.  As Mr. Levine noted, the use of policy endorsements to limit coverage for bodily injury claims to those arising in some sports, but not when they arise in football – where injuries are most likely to occur – is troubling.  Football is where the coverage is needed most; yet the insurer apparently removed it using a policy endorsement that purports to afford coverage, not restrict it.  As Mr. Levine notes, cases like this underscore the need for policyholders to carefully review all policy endorsements to ensure that the policy when read as a whole actually provides the coverages that are needed the most.