Hunton Insurance Recovery Blog

Liability insurance policies generally have an exclusion barring coverage for claims brought by the insured’s own employees. Many times, especially in the hospitality industry, a liability insurance policy provides coverage for various different companies. A common question is whether claims brought by an employee of one insured against another insured are covered under such a policy.

Technological advances like 3D printing and “sharing platforms” have increased business risk and, simultaneously, opportunities for risk-shifting between stakeholders. For example, 3D printing has exposed manufacturers to new risks associated with professional, product, IP and workplace liabilities, and the sharing economy (e.g., ride-sharing, home-sharing, car-sharing, etc.) has complicated traditional risk-sharing structures and insurance portfolios.  Attorneys Michael Levine and Andrea DeField discuss the primary issues policyholders need to consider ...

Following a game-ending ankle sprain in Monday night’s loss to the Cleveland Browns, New York Giants receiver Odell Beckham Jr. ("OBJ") announced that he is considering the purchase of a $100 million insurance policy to protect against future injury. The protection does not come cheap – with premium around $600,000, according to a recent news account.  Nevertheless, OBJ apparently is considering the insurance in the event he cannot come to terms with the Giants on a new long-term contract.

This past Monday, August 14, a federal magistrate judge explained to an insurer that “you can’t always get what you want” when he denied the carrier’s motion to dismiss claims arising from a July 4, 2015 Rolling Stones concert, concluding that the facts in the complaint allege a properly pled claim.

Benchmark Litigation has released its Under 40 Hotlist for 2017, naming the year’s most promising emerging talent in their respective litigation communities in the US and Canadian litigation community by peers and clients.  Among those named is our own Syed Ahmad, along with other Hunton partners Ryan Glasgow (Labor & Employment), Jason Harbour (Bankruptcy), Kerry McGrath (Administrative Law) and Amanda Wait (Competition).

Congratulations, Syed!

A Colorado district court held last week that a general liability insurer must defend a product disparagement claim despite a broadly-worded intellectual property exclusion in the policy. The court reached its ruling even though the alleged disparagement involved representations about patent infringement. In so holding, the court rejected the insurer’s attempt to deny coverage where the “crux of the dispute” fell within the policy’s personal injury coverage part and the insurer had failed to show that the underlying allegations “unequivocally” fell within the ambiguously worded exclusion.

Since our first report last year, Lemonade Insurance, a tech start-up that planned to offer peer-to-peer insurance products, has launched in four states, offering homeowners and renters insurance in New York, California, Illinois, and New Jersey. Lemonade’s cutting-edge use of technology and its alternative business model could prove disruptive to the insurance industry.

Dick’s Sporting Goods (“DSG”) sued a Chinese insurer, PICC Property and Casualty Company Limited Suzhou Branch (“PICC”), seeking coverage under a products liability insurance policy for personal injury claims arising out of a burst exercise ball. In Dick’s Sporting Goods, Inc. v. PICC Prop. & Cas. Co. Ltd. Suzhou Branch, No. 2:16-cv-01635-DSC-RCM (W.D. Pa. July 28, 2017), a federal magistrate judge in Pennsylvania found that an insurance policy’s forum-selection clause required DSG to assert its claims in a Chinese court and, accordingly, recommended that DSG’s coverage claims be dismissed.

Hollywood is not off to a great start for the month of August. Kanye West's touring company, Very Good Touring, Inc. ("Very Good"), sued insurance company Lloyd's of London ("Lloyd's") on Tuesday in California federal court for withholding almost $10 million in coverage for the shows on West's "Life of Pablo" Tour that were canceled due to West's health condition. In Very Good Touring, Inc. v. Cathedral Syndicate, et al., No. 2:17-cv-05693 (C.D. Cal. filed Aug. 1, 2017), the touring company characterized Lloyd's delay in providing a coverage opinion as "emblematic of a broader modus operandi of the insurers of never-ending post-claim underwriting where the insurers hunt for some contrived excuse not to pay."

Highlighting the continued problems faced by policyholders in obtaining coverage for "computer fraud," a Michigan district court recently held that a manufacturer could not recover $800,000 in funds lost after an employee mistakenly wired payment for legitimate vendor invoices into a fraudster's bank account after receiving a spoofed e-mail requesting payment. In American Tooling Center, Inc. v. Travelers Casualty and Surety Company of America, No. 16-12108 (E.D. Mich. Aug. 1, 2017), the district court applied state law favoring a narrow interpretation of the crime policy's computer fraud provision to hold that the policyholder had not suffered a "direct" loss that was "directly caused" by the use of any computer.