Hunton Insurance Recovery Blog

Coordinating various insurance products to avoid coverage gaps can be a complex undertaking as exposures are shifted from one policy to another across different insurers, policy forms, and coverages. One recent case, Singh, Rx, PLLC, et al. v. Selective Insurance Company of South Carolina, et al., No. 24-1678, left a pharmacy without coverage when a professional services exclusion barred coverage that was not covered under a separate professional liability policy geared at covering those risks. The case is a reminder of the importance of understanding insurance policy exclusions, particularly in the context of professional services, and especially where the excluded risks are not covered by other policies.

In a recent Client Alert, Hunton insurance partner Geoffrey Fehling discusses the impact of the California appellate court decision Practice Fusion, Inc. v. Freedom Specialty Insurance Co., where the court denied coverage under a directors and officers liability policy for a software developer’s $118 million settlement with the US Department of Justice to resolve allegations that the company violated anti-kickback laws in designing and implementing sponsored alerts in electronic health records software. 

While policyholders have experienced a wide range of conflicting rulings related to COVID-19 business interruption losses, a recent Northern District of Illinois decision shows that the pandemic continues to present a range of exposures beyond business interruption losses, including for claims under directors and officers liability policies. In Federal Insurance Co. v. Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, Inc., No. 20 C 6797 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 19, 2021), the court rejected the insurer’s broad reading of a professional services exclusion, contract exclusion, and the insurability of alleged restitution to deny coverage under a D&O policy for losses arising from a cancelled trade show.

In its third quarter report, insurer Beazley reported a nine-fold increase in social engineering attacks (i.e., deception-based fraud/crime) as compared to the same time last year.  So far, the majority of social engineering attacks in 2017 were focused on the professional services sector (18%), followed by financial institutions (9%), higher education (9%) and healthcare (3%).  The report also notes continued high rates of unintended disclosure via employee negligence across all sectors (29%), second only to affirmative hacking or malware attacks (34%).