Hinshaw Releases Second Edition of Duty to Defend: A Fifty-State Survey
Loading and Unloading Under GL and Auto Policies: 2022
Prior & Pending Litigation
What is a Damron Agreement?
This insurance-coverage dispute involved alleged asbestos exposure from asbestos-containing vermiculite mined from Vermiculite Mountain outside of Libby, Mont. The court acknowledged that vermiculite ore may contain toxic...more
Rodrigues v. Shelbourne Spring, LLC, No. A-39-23 (December 12, 2024) - In a unanimous decision, the New Jersey Supreme Court found Hartford Underwriters Insurance Company had no duty to defend the employer, SIR Electric LLC....more
We kick off the year with a quartet of state supreme court decisions and an intermediate appellate court ruling that has insurers breathing a harmonious sigh of relief. Policyholders and insurers often disagree over what the...more
An owner, general contractor (GC) and subcontractor (Sub) were sued by injured workers at a construction site, and they were defended by the Sub’s insurer, U.S. Specialty Insurance Company. U.S. Specialty tendered their...more
There’s been plenty of litigation over whether construction defect claims qualify for coverage under a CGL policy. This month, we discuss two federal circuit court rulings (First and Seventh Circuits) that reach opposite...more
Applying Washington state law, the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington has held that an insurer had a duty to defend a demand for payment under a vendor invoice for usage fees incurred due to...more
On October 7, 2024, the Hawaii Supreme Court, responding to questions certified by the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii, determined that insurers had no duty to defend Aloha Petroleum ("Aloha") in two...more
In a recent opinion, the District Court for the Northern District of Georgia has ordered an insurer to defend an insured hotel from allegations that it negligently or intentionally permitted a minor to be trafficked for sex...more
The U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, applying New Jersey law, has held that a misappropriation of funds exclusion unambiguously barred coverage for an accounting firm under its professional liability policy...more
The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, applying Louisiana law, has held that an insurer does not need to cover a monetary judgment rendered in favor of two former employees of the insured...more
A federal district court, applying California law, has determined that an insurer owed a duty to defend because the policy’s retroactive date exclusion was ambiguous in that it could reasonably be interpreted to apply only to...more
The owners hired a general contractor (GC) insured by Amerisure to build a movie theatre, and the GC hired a masonry subcontractor (Sub) insured by Selective under a primary and umbrella policy...more
Technology Insurance Company, as the liability insurer for a landlord, filed a declaratory judgment action against Main Street America Assurance Company, as the liability insurer for the landlord’s tenant, seeking a...more
In Hartford Fire Ins. Co. v. The Western Union Co. et al., No. 22-CV-0557 (JMF) (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 22, 2022), a federal judge in New York granted Hartford Fire Insurance Company’s motion for judgment on the pleadings and motion...more
On December 5, 2022, the U.S. District Court for the District of Georgia held that a total pollution exclusion (TPE) in a CGL policy relieved the insurer of any obligation to defend or indemnify a recycling company in a...more
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Using general contract interpretation principles, the Fifth Circuit reversed summary judgment in favor of an insurer and found a duty to defend Landry’s in a data breach lawsuit. Landry’s Inc. v. The Insurance Company of the...more
In July of 2020, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit revisited and affirmed its prediction that Texas courts will not allow extrinsic evidence to determine an insurer’s duty to defend where such evidence...more
Applying Arizona law, the United States District Court for the District of Arizona held that an insurer that breached its duty to defend bears the burden of demonstrating that an allocation of defense costs between covered...more
October 27, 2020 - In third party coverage matters, the traditional test to determine whether an insured is entitled to a defense under a commercial general liability policy is the Comparison or Four-Corners Test....more
A California federal court has held that a complaint alleging that a law firm was providing services in a non-legal capacity nonetheless triggered a duty to defend the firm under a lawyers’ professional liability policy,...more
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, applying New York law, has concluded that an insurer waived the right to assert a policy exclusion as a coverage defense in a declaratory judgment action after...more
Coverage under most commercial general liability (CGL) policies applies only to liability arising from an “accident.” As such, injury or damage that an insured “expected or intended” to occur is not covered....more
In a sweeping decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit extended the absolute pollution exclusion to the unplanned discharge of “rock fines,” pellets produced during quarry operations, and denied coverage for...more
In Philadelphia Indemnity Insurance Co. v. Hollycal Production Inc. et. al., No. 5:18-cv-00768-PA-SP (C.D. Cal. Dec. 7, 2018), a California district court held that Philadelphia Indemnity Insurance Co. was not obligated to...more