Hunton Insurance Recovery Blog

Gatwick airport has been shut down since Wednesday night UK time due to the presence of multiple drones around the perimeter of the runway. A drone was first spotted Wednesday evening in the vicinity of Gatwick’s runway. After being briefly re-opened several hours later, the runway was shut down for good when several more drones were discovered. Given the public safety risk of attempting to shoot the drones down from the ground, law enforcement is instead focusing on identifying and apprehending the drone operators to ensure that the area is safe for air travel.

Puerto Rico’s dire insurance situation more than a year after Hurricane Maria remains a constant reminder of why policyholders must diligently pursue their property and business interruption claims in the immediate aftermath of a storm.  The numbers are staggering.  On an island the approximate size of Connecticut, Hurricane Maria caused an estimated $100 billion in damage.  According to the Office of the Insurance Commissioner of Puerto Rico, the hurricane resulted in more than 287,000 insurance claims.  Roughly 11,000 of those claims, representing an estimated $2 billion in losses, remain unresolved.

In a recent Client Alert, Hunton insurance lawyers Mike Levine, Sergio Oehninger and Josh Paster discuss the impact of the Second Circuit’s recent opinion in Patriarch Partners, LLC v. Axis Insurance Co., where the Court confirmed that a warranty letter accompanying the policyholder’s insurance application barred coverage for a lengthy SEC investigation. The decision underscores the importance of understanding how a policy’s language and definitions impact the scope of information that policyholders must consider when representing facts and circumstances in ...

The Fifth Circuit in Evanston Insurance Co. v. Mid-Continent Casualty Co. recently held that multiple collisions caused by the same insured driver over a span of 10 minutes constitute a single occurrence subject to a $1 million limit in the insured’s primary policy with Mid-Continent. The holding reversed a lower court’s ruling that Mid-Continent is liable for an additional sum the excess insurer, Evanston, paid to resolve all of the claims arising from the collisions. At issue, a fundamental question about causation and coverage under commercial liability insurance.

In a prior post, we discussed a New York trial-court decision that found an insurance policy issued in 1966, to insure the construction of the World Trade Center, continues to cover modern-day asbestos claims, with each claim constituting an individual occurrence.  Last week, in American Home Assurance Co. v. The Port Authority of N.Y. and N.J., 7628-7628A (1st Dep’t Nov. 15, 2018), an intermediate appellate court affirmed that decision, agreeing that coverage is triggered for claims tied to alleged asbestos exposure at the WTC site in the 1960s and ’70s.

A Georgia Court of Appeals judge recently ruled that Scapa Dryer Fabrics was entitled to $17.4 million worth of primary coverage from National Union Fire Insurance Company of Pittsburgh, PA for claims of injurious exposure to Scapa’s asbestos-containing dryer felts. Nat’l Union Fire Ins. Co. of Pittsburgh, PA v. Scapa Dryer Fabrics, Inc., No. A18A1173, 2018 WL 5306693, at *1 (Ga. Ct. App. Oct. 26, 2018). Scapa sought coverage under five National Union policies issued from 1983–1987. The 1983, 1984 and 1985 National Union policies had limits of $1 million per occurrence and $1 million in the aggregate. The liability limits for the 1986 and 1987 renewal policies were amended by endorsement to $7.2 million. Scapa sought to recover the full $17.4 million from all five policies. National Union argued that a “Non-Cumulative Limits of Liability Endorsement” in the 1986 and 1987 policies limited Scapa’s recovery to only $7.2 million. Scapa sued National Union and its sister company, New Hampshire Insurance Company (from which Scapa purchased excess liability coverage), in Georgia state court.

Hunton Insurance Coverage attorneys Syed Ahmad and Geoff Fehling contributed to the firm’s Recall Roundup, a monthly publication canvassing consumer product and retail recalls and related litigation.  In the October issue, Ahmad and Fehling discuss two recent decisions with potentially broad implications.  In Lake Country Foods, Inc. v. Houston Casualty Co., No. 18-CV-734 (E.D. Wis. filed May 11, 2018), nutritional supplement manufacturer Lake Country Foods, Inc., (“LCF”) filed an insurance coverage complaint seeking to enforce its rights under a product contamination policy issued by Houston Casualty Company (“HCC”) arising from a salmonella contamination incident.  In the October Recall Roundup, Ahmad and Fehling discuss the potential impact that the insurer’s counterclaims seeking reimbursement of the approximately $1.2 million advance payment it made in response to the alleged salmonella contamination incident might have on the pending insurance recovery dispute.

In a win for policyholders, a California appellate court has held that the loss of use of property resulting from alleged negligence constitutes property damage under a liability insurance policy.

The head of Hunton Andrews Kurth’s insurance practice, Walter Andrews, was interviewed earlier this week by ABC 7 (WJLA) concerning the need for cyber insurance and the benefits that it can provide to government contractors and other businesses that are impacted by a cyber event.  Andrews explains the diverse spectrum of benefits that are available through cyber insurance products, but cautions that a serious lack of uniformity exists among today’s cyber insurance products, making it crucial that policyholders carefully analyze their cyber insurance to ensure it provides the scope and amount of insurance they desire.

The Second Circuit recently held that competing “anti-concurrent cause” provisions in a commercial property policy present a potential ambiguity that could result in favor of coverage for losses sustained by Madelaine Chocolate after storm surge from Hurricane Sandy combined to cause substantial damage to Madelaine’s property and a resulting loss of income.