In Clarabelle Wheeler v. The Standard Fire Insurance Company, 2016 WL 1164651 (W.D. Va. Mar. 23, 2016), the insurer argued that the insured failed to give “prompt notice” of the loss as required by the policy’s notice condition because she waited six-months to report five large trees had fallen on her barn. In support of this argument, the insurer offered evidence that the insured’s delay in providing notice prejudiced it by depriving it of an opportunity to investigate the claim and mitigate the resulting damage to the barn. Summary judgment in favor of the insurer as to whether there is coverage for the insured’s claim under the policy would often be granted on these facts.
But, the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia denied summary judgment in this case based on the distinction between a “loss” and an “occurrence.” Read more ›
For years, property insurance policies that exclude rot damage have been called upon to cover rot because the policies extend coverage to “collapse”—an undefined term—caused by hidden decay, even if the structure remains standing and in use.
Courts in a number of American states, notably California, have found that pollution exclusions in first-party policies are “inherently ambiguous” and that the purpose of such provisions is “to address liability arising from traditional environmental pollution, and not ‘ordinary acts of negligence involving harmful substances.’ ” On December 11th, the Vermont Supreme Court unanimously refused to follow that line of jurisprudence in 
The insureds owned a mobile home in Texarkana that sustained a covered loss in July of 2012. The policy provided that the company would pay the ACV, which was defined to mean “total restoration costs less depreciation.” Depreciation itself was then defined, and the contract of insurance expressly stated that when paying ACV, the carrier would “include the depreciation of the materials, the labor, and the tax attributable to each part which must be replaced[.]” In accordance with that, the amount paid by the insurer depreciated both materials and labor. 
The insureds owned a home in Lake in the Hills. On August 5, 2014, a fire rendered the dwelling uninhabitable, and the policyholders’ 19-year-old son, who resided with his parents, subsequently admitted to setting the blaze. The boy was sentenced to prison for the crime of aggravated arson. The carrier denied the insurance claim of the husband and wife in reliance on an intentional loss exclusion reciting that the policy did not cover “any loss arising out of any intentional or criminal act committed . . . by you or at your direction . . . with the intent to cause a loss.” The terms “you” and “your” were defined by the contract of insurance as meaning “the person or persons named in the Declarations and if a resident of the same household . . . the relatives of either[.]” 
The insured owned a home in Madison that suffered water damage from a malfunctioning dishwasher, and he brought suit against the carrier and its independent adjuster, alleging that they had underpaid the loss. The allegations included negligence; the policyholder contended, inter alia, that the adjuster had prepared a negligent estimate and neglected to include damage to the homeowner’s personal property in his scope of loss. The adjuster moved to dismiss the negligence count, and Judge Victor Bolden granted the motion on November 24th. 