Hunton Insurance Recovery Blog

In recent months, insurers have increasingly used New York rescission law as a means to not only deny coverage for specific claims, but also to void any protection an insurance policy may provide for other losses down the road. For example, H.J. Heinz Company recently found itself without coverage for a $30 million recall after its insurer rescinded its policy based on a misrepresentation in Heinz’s insurance application. In an article for FC&S Legal, Syed S. Ahmad, Tae Andrews, and Kelly Oeltjenbruns analyze recent rescission claims and illustrate the dangerous exposure—and ...

Commercial general liability policies typically provide coverage to insureds for losses resulting from property damage caused by an “occurrence,” usually defined in the policy as “an accident, including continuous or repeated exposure to substantially the same harmful conditions.” In the context of food recalls, however, the exact cause of the food damage, whether contamination, spoilage or something else, may be unknown. This creates uncertainty, and in turn, a coverage dispute, over whether the cause of damage was indeed accidental, and thus a covered ...