Flood Basics still causing pain for some
K&L Gates Triage: Emergency Preparedness and Response in Long Term Care - Part II
When the National Weather Service names a storm heading in your direction, you know to expect wind and water. This can create a quandary for property insurers. Is water damage from a named windstorm caused by the flood or the...more
The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York recently granted an insurer’s motion for summary judgment in a case arising from Superstorm Sandy based on unambiguous policy language providing a...more
Last year, we wrote a post to mark the sixth anniversary of “Superstorm Sandy,” a Category 1 storm that made landfall in October 2012. We also shared a preview of this year’s series of posts on extreme weather, and its impact...more
When is an insurer’s “Rejection of Proof of Loss” letter for flood insurance damage, which states on its face that it “is not a denial of your claim,” nevertheless a written denial of claim? According to the Third Circuit in...more
As reported by the New York Times earlier this month, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (“FEMA”) is “for the first time in three decades” redrawing flood maps in the state of New York. As noted, New York has over 500...more
The Senate’s vote Tuesday to forgive $16 billion in debt owed by the National Flood Insurance Program gives a much-needed boost for NFIP as it faces large payouts from recent hurricanes. Packaged with other disaster aid...more
Cozen O’Connor attorneys Thomas McKay III, Richard Mackowsky, Charles Jesuit, and Melissa Brill recently secured summary judgment from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York in favor of Great...more
Nearly five years after Superstorm Sandy, some consistent themes are beginning to emerge from the increasingly robust body of property coverage case law related to the storm. A recent decision from the Eastern District of New...more
A federal court in New Jersey recently dismissed state law claims brought by third party plaintiffs, including the insured’s broker, against a Write Your Own insurance carrier. The claims at issue in Residences at Bay Point...more
Frequent readers of the blog will appreciate that disputes involving the application of anti-concurrent causation language in the context of claims for flood or water damage have appeared with some frequency in recent years....more
As we have written about before on this blog, the water damage caused by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012 gave rise to important questions concerning the applicability of so-called “anti-concurrent causation” clauses. Such was...more
As this blog has reported, exclusions and limits for flood coverage have generally held up against the tide of claims arising from Superstorm Sandy. Now that the water is gone, however, new losses have been discovered, and...more
Courts across the country (and particularly since Super Storm Sandy in 2012) have consistently held that, in litigation involving a dispute concerning the investigation, adjustment, or payment of a flood claim under the...more
Readers of this blog may note that we have previously discussed the topic of anti-concurrent causation clauses in various jurisdictions around the country. As a quick reminder, an anti-concurrent causation clause is that...more
Last week, a unanimous panel of New Jersey’s intermediate level appellate court rejected policyholder arguments that even though flood was excluded, the proximate cause of their Superstorm Sandy loss was the non-excluded...more
When Super Storm Sandy struck the Northeast on October 29, 2012, states, cities, municipalities and towns up and down the East Coast ordered hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate from their homes and businesses. In the...more
The Superior Court of New Jersey, Essex County's ruling in Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. v. Ace American Insurance Co. on March 23 follows a line of thought advanced by many policyholder lawyers that included a...more
October 29 marked the second anniversary of Superstorm Sandy’s assault on New York and New Jersey. Although the insurance litigation arising from this storm is just beginning, we have already seen a number of decisions out...more
In New Sea Crest Healthcare Center, LLC v. Lexington Ins. Co., No. 12-CV 6414(RJD)(RLM), 2014 WL 2879839 (E.D.N.Y. June 24, 2014), the insureds suffered losses to nursing homes in two locations as a result of Hurricane Sandy....more
Superstorm Sandy jurisprudence is starting to shed light on some unresolved issues in the effected states. In El-Ad 250 West LLC v. Zurich American Ins. Co., — N.Y.S.2d —, 2014 WL 2931058 (N.Y.Cty., June 27, 2014), a New...more
N.Y. Court Rules In Deductible Battle For Flood Damage Caused By Sandy - Why it matters: The destruction left in the wake of Superstorm Sandy has resulted in a mess of insurance battles for policyholders as well. In a...more
In a January 2014 decision that may prove valuable to policyholders in their disputes over deductibles, a New York state trial court ruled that the appropriate deductible applicable to an oil terminal operator’s $2.28 million...more
New Jersey has now joined New York in instituting a voluntary mediation program for insured victims of Superstorm Sandy with “open and unresolved first-party insurance claims.” The program became operative with the issuance...more
In response to the flood impacts of storms including Hurricane Sandy, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection NJDEP) recently adopted emergency amendments to the Flood Hazard Area Control Act (FHACA) rules. This...more
The impact of Superstorm Sandy on New Jersey was enormous: nearly 346,000 housing units either destroyed or damaged and 190,000 businesses affected. Sandy demonstrated just how vulnerable to damage much of the low-lying areas...more