Hunton Insurance Recovery Blog

In a June 18, 2019 article published in Law360, Hunton insurance team partner Syed Ahmad analyzed some of the most important insurance cases from 2019 so far.

Mr. Ahmad first touched on a pair of rulings from the Montana Supreme Court. In each, that court refused to find coverage for consent judgments negotiated by policyholders. The court in Abbey/Land v. Glacier Construction Partners rejected an underlying consent judgment because it was unreasonable and flowed from collusion between the underlying parties. Then, in Draggin’ Y Cattle Co. v. JCCS, the court reversed a trial court’s holding that an underlying consent judgment was presumptively reasonable, holding that the judgment did not deserve a “presumption of reasonableness,” because the insurer had not breached its duty to defend.

Hunton insurance recovery partner Syed Ahmad was recently asked by Insurance Law360 to opine concerning key insurance issues that are pending before the Wisconsin Supreme Court and ripe for decision this fall.  In the article, which can be found here, Ahmad notes with respect to the case of Secura Insurance v. Ray Duerr Logging LLC, case number 2016AP299, concerning whether damage tied to a wildfire constitutes one or multiple occurrences for coverage purposes, the Court of Appeals did a good job of focusing on the particulars of the claim at hand and not superficially relying on abstract labels like “cause test” or “effects test,” that are not all that illuminating, explaining that what one party characterizes as the “cause” of a loss can often be what another party deems to be “effect” resulting in the loss.