Articles Posted in Additional Insureds

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GettyImages-182494032-205x300Judgment Preservation Insurance (JPI), also sometimes referred to as Judgment Protection Insurance, has become both more requested and available in recent years. As more plaintiffs seek ways to protect court judgments, more insurers are prepared to assume the risk of insuring such risks and so have entered the market and expanded capacity. As a result, what was formerly a niche insurance product has, of late, been more widely discussed and considered by prospective policyholders, raising the question of whether your company should consider JPI if you win a substantial sum in a trial court.

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GettyImages-1219359211-1-300x200What is subrogation? Why am I being asked to waive it? Should I care? To answer that last question, let’s take a quick run at the first two.

What Is Subrogation?
“Subrogation” refers to the act of one person or party standing in the place of another person or party. It is a legal right held by most insurance carriers to pursue a third party that caused an insurance loss in order to recover the amount the insurance carrier paid  the insured to cover the loss. This occurs when (i) the insurance carrier makes a payment on behalf of its insured as the result of a covered accident or injury, and then (ii) the insurer then seeks repayment from the at-fault party.

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NY-Cal-flags-278x300Four months ago, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed the Adult Survivors Act (ASA) (S.66A/A.648A), creating a one-year window, beginning November 24, 2022, for adult survivors of sexual assault to bring civil claims against their alleged attackers which otherwise would have been time barred. On September 19, 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an equivalent law, the Sexual Abuse and Cover Up Accountability Act (AB-2777), which similarly suspends the statute of limitations for civil claims of sexual assault and other vicarious offenses arising out of that conduct starting January 1, 2023. These laws will likely generate a surge of litigation in California and New York, undoubtedly impacting many businesses operating there. Many, if not most, of those companies will look to insurers to furnish legal defenses and to financially support settlements or damage awards based on past policies.

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overhead image of a contract on a clipboard, construction helmet, gloves, edge of laptopIn a previous post, we addressed blanket additional insured endorsements and the role they play in passing insurance obligations downstream. In short, the purpose of a “blanket” endorsement is to grant additional insured status to any company as required in a written contract with the named insured. This obligation often begins in the prime contract where the owner requires additional insured status on the general contractor’s insurance. However, the general contractor typically attempts to pass this obligation downstream to its subcontractor by including a requirement in the subcontract that both the general contractor and owner are named as additional insureds. But what happens if there is no written agreement between the named insured and the company seeking additional insured status, or if there are multiple required additional insured entities and only some have contractual privity with the subcontractor?

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iStock-1026097380-covenant-rails-300x200As coverage counsel, we see the situation arise time and again: facing down substantial potential liability in a pending lawsuit, a policyholder engages in good-faith settlement discussions with the plaintiff. After animated negotiations between the parties, the plaintiff finally makes a reasonable offer, only for the policyholder’s insurance carrier to throw up a roadblock by refusing to fund or consent to the settlement. But policyholders need not always resign themselves to continuing costly and time-consuming litigation—a “covenant not to execute” may be the switch to put the settlement back on track.

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In a previous blog post we discussed a New York trial court decision in which the court granted additional insured status to entities that did not contract with the named insured, but were referenceiStock-801340876-two-directions-300x200d by category in the named insured’s subcontract. But before concluding you’ve got additional insurance, there’s another opinion you should know about. Around the same time, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit came to the opposite conclusion holding that an Additional Insured endorsement did not cover the University of Rochester Medical Center, even though the subcontract specifically provided that the University would be an additional insured, and Harleysville Insurance Co. therefore had no obligation to defend or indemnify it in a suit filed by an injured construction worker.

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It’s that time of the year when Americans gather together, enjoy a feast, and fall asleep in front of the TV. But before the tryptophan kicks in, we also like to give thanks for the good things that have iStock-623763994-t-giving-300x200happened in the past year. Corporate policyholders can share in the tradition, as this year has produced a number of court decisions that favored insureds and protected their coverage expectations. Here are a few of the cases we are most thankful for:

Harleysville Group Insurance v. Heritage Communities, Inc.

This case out of the South Carolina Supreme Court gave generously to policyholders in a number of ways this year (giving us the opportunity to post in this blog again and again and again). The case involved defective construction claims against a developer. The developer’s insurer, Harleysville, provided a defense under a vague reservation of rights letter. After the underlying plaintiffs were awarded verdicts against the developer, Harleysville sued to avoid covering the judgments. The court ruled against Harleysville on four issues:

  1. Harleysville’s vague, general reservation of rights letter did not effectively reserve its rights to contest coverage under the terms and exclusions in the policy;
  2. Where the underlying verdicts did not apportion the damages between covered and uncovered losses, the insurer bore the burden of proving amounts allocable to uncovered losses. Where the insurer failed to meet that burden, it had to cover the entire verdict;
  3. Punitive damages awarded in the verdicts were found to be covered under Harleysville’s policy; and
  4. The owners’ association, which was asserting the dissolved developer’s coverage rights in the case, had standing to challenge the insurer’s reservation of rights letter.

Harleysville is a case that just keeps on giving.

Verizon Communications v. Illinois National Insurance Company

The duty to provide a defense, or reimburse defense costs, is one of the most important features of liability insurance. You could say it’s the stuffing, where indemnity is the turkey. The Delaware Superior Court emphasized that obligation in Verizon to the tune of $48 million in defense costs that the insurer had refused to pay. This decision was important because it rejected the insurer’s attempt to define the vague term “securities claim” narrowly to avoid its obligation to pay defense costs. More broadly, the court upheld the pro-policyholder interpretative doctrine of contra proferentem, rejecting the insurer’s argument that the doctrine should not apply where the insured is a large, sophisticated corporation. Applying the doctrine, the court held that unless it can be shown that the insured had a hand in drafting the policy language, ambiguous terms should be interpreted against the insurer. A more detailed analysis of the decision by this firm can be found here.

All State Interior Demolition Inc. v. Scottsdale Insurance Company and McMillin Management Services v. Financial Pacific Insurance Company

Thanksgiving dinner is always better with more guests. Additional Insured endorsements in policies extend the invitation to more parties that may require a seat at the table of insurance protection. This is especially important in the construction context, where developers and general contractors rely on numerous subcontractors’ insurance policies to protect them from liability arising from those subcontractors’ work. These two decisions rejected insurers’ attempts to narrow the application of additional insured endorsements.

In All State Interior, previously highlighted here, a New York County trial court interpreted an endorsement broadly, granting additional insured status to companies that didn’t technically contract with the subcontractor, and who weren’t named in the endorsement. The court, in essence, incorporated the terms of the contract between All State and the subcontractor into the endorsement to trigger additional insured coverage for the project owner, site lessor, and construction manager as All State’s “partners, directors, officers, employees, agents and representatives.”

In McMillin, the insurer’s policy granted additional insured status to McMillin, the general contractor of a project, for “liability arising out of [the subcontractor’s] ongoing operations,” and excluded additional insured status for the insured’s completed operations. The insurer denied defense coverage on the basis that the subcontractor had finished working on the project. The California Court of Appeal disagreed, stating that the endorsement’s phrase “arising out of” is broader than “during,” and so the liability did not have to arise while the insured was still working on the project.

Nooter Corporation v. Allianz Underwriters Insurance Company

When it’s time for dessert, allocating the available pie to make sure everyone gets what they deserve can be tricky. This year, Missouri joined the ranks of “all sums” states that maximize coverage for policyholders with long-tail claims stretching over several years. The “all sums” method of allocation allows an insured to allocate all of its damages from long-tail losses to a single year of coverage. This ruling by the Missouri Court of Appeals was based on the plain language of the policies, which promise to indemnify the insured for all sums the insured is legally obligated to pay for occurrences during the policy period. The court also ruled that all triggered primary policies across a period of years need not be exhausted before excess policies in the period selected by the policyholder can be triggered. The court ruled that only the primary policy in one year needs to be exhausted before that year’s excess policies are triggered. For a more thorough analysis of this case, click here.

Medidata Solutions, Inc. v. Federal Insurance Company

Rather than brave the stampedes of Black Friday, one can get good deals on holiday gifts on Cyber Monday. But to protect against cyber thieves, make sure your insurance coverage will protect you. In this case, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York interpreted the computer fraud provision of a crime policy to do just that. Policyholder Medidata was the victim of fraud when someone tricked its employees into wiring money overseas, using spoofed emails that looked like they came from the company’s president. Medidata’s insurer denied its claim, stating that the computer fraud clause of the crime coverage required actual hacking into and manipulation of Medidata’s computer system. But the court sided with Medidata, ruling that the spoofing of emails violated the integrity of the insured’s computer system enough to trigger coverage, and actual entry by hackers was not required by the policy language or by precedent.

We at Pillsbury hope you all had a very Happy Thanksgiving!

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We put lights on the front of trains so we can see them approaching in a tunnel. And we buy insurance for the accidents that occur despite such precautions. General contractors try to manage their project risks by taking precautions to avoid accidents, but they also require subcontractors to name them as “additional insureds” on their general liability or project-specific insurance should an accident happen. Suppose you’ve done that. An accident follows: Your subcontractor injures a person on the project site as a result of your own workers’ failure to warn. You’re covered, right? Better slow down.

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An all-too-common problem in the construction industry occurs when a company that is supposed to name another company as an additional insured on its policy fails to do so. The company that expects to be an additional insured (typically an owner or upstream contractor) sometimes does not follow through to ensure that it is actually added to the policy through an endorsement, or may rely on a Certificate of Insurance, which is not proof of coverage.

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In 1173, builders broke ground in Pisa, Italy, on the Torre de Pisa (that is, the Tower of Pisa). At over 183 feet, it was to be a grand statement—remember, this was 1173, not 2016.

Torre Inclinada de Pisa

But the story is not all roses. The tower began immediately to tilt—by the time they started laying just the second floor of the tower, it was leaning. Thus, it earned the name we all now know (and love?), “Torre pendent di Pisa”—the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Wikipedia explains, “[t]he tower’s tilt began during construction, caused by an inadequate foundation on ground too soft on one side to properly support the structure’s weight. The tilt increased in the decades before the structure was completed, and gradually increased until the structure was stabilized (and the tilt partially corrected) by efforts in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.” The tower now leans over 12 feet from the vertical axis.

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