Massachusetts Court: Loss of Drink Product Caused By Faulty Workmanship And Design of Bottle Caps Not a Covered Ensuing Loss

Monday saw a unanimous panel of Massachusetts’ intermediate level appellate court reject a policyholder’s ensuing loss arguments.  In H.P. Hood LLC v. Allianz Global Risks U.S. Ins. Co., 2015 Mass. App. LEXIS 175, 2015 WL 6629484 (Mass., Nov. 2, 2015), the justices held that the loss of over two million bottles of an energy drink was not separate or different in kind but rather “directly caused by, and completely bound up in” the excluded peril — faulty workmanship and design of the bottle caps. The insured produced a high-performance protein supplement known as Myoplex for Abbott Laboratories, and it had contracted to manufacture some forty million bottles in 2009.  The drink was a “shelf stable” beverage that did not require…