Policyholder Pulse
On November 15, 2023, join PFAS Insurance Recovery Taskforce members Tamara Bruno and Scott Greenspan for “PFAS Insurance Coverage: The Policyholder’s Roadmap to Recovery.”
During this PLI event, Tamara and Scott will explore the most significant court decisions on PFAS coverage issues, provide a guide to registrants on the major coverage issues raised by PFAS claims under legacy and current insurance policies, and offer strategies to policyholders for insurance recovery of PFAS claims.
To register, click here.
Long a feature of directors’ and officers’ (D&O) liability insurance policies, the so-called “Bump-Up” Exclusion has gotten significant attention over the last few years. Because of the recent escalation in securities litigation that follows a majority of mergers and acquisitions, the Bump-Up Exclusion is of critical importance to publicly traded policyholders. Bump-Up Exclusion provisions are often found in a D&O policy’s definition of “Loss” and purport to exclude the amount of a settlement or judgment that represents an increase in the price paid to acquire an entity, where such consideration was alleged to be inadequate. A recent decision out of the Delaware state courts affirms again that D&O insurers will be held to the specific terms of their Bump-Up Exclusions.
Courts don’t look kindly upon insurance company shell games. In 
Following the breakup of large utility holding companies by trust busters in the 1930s, General Electric created Ebasco (Electric Bond and Share Company), a construction company and consultancy that, among other things, assisted newly independent utilities throughout the United States to obtain broad excess-level occurrence-based liability insurance policies. These so-called Ebasco policies were attractive to utility policyholders because of their comprehensive insuring agreement, modest exclusions (e.g., no pollution exclusions), and the absence of aggregate limits. Illustratively, a $10 million Ebasco policy potentially could pay up to 20 times its limits (equivalent to $200 million) to fund cleanup of 20 contaminated sites, assuming an occurrence at each site happened during the policy period. For decades, Ebasco policies, primarily underwritten by London market insurers, have been the subject of litigation related to pollution, asbestos and human health claims.
Temperatures in Arizona this week reached 
It is a settled principle of insurance law that a liability insurer’s duty to defend is broader than its duty to indemnify. In most jurisdictions, if any portion of a complaint against a policyholder is even potentially covered, the insurer must defend the entire action.
What 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.
The rare insurance dispute has appeared on the horizon for the nation’s highest court. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari and agreed to take up the case of