Policyholder Pulse
With hundreds of cases now pending nationwide involving insurance coverage claims for business interruptions stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, a federal panel has been considering the prospect of consolidating the litigation into one multidistrict litigation (MDL) to promote their efficient resolution. On August 12, 2020, the panel issued a decision ruling out a single nationwide MDL, but leaving open the possibility of smaller, insurer-specific MDLs.
In “COVID-19 Business Interruption Litigation May Be Consolidated for a Select Few,” David F. Klein examines this decision and its implications more closely.
Late in June, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in 
Insurance policies are legal documents. In the event of a dispute, their scope and meaning will be submitted to a court or arbitrator for interpretation. Most brokers are not attorneys. Most risk managers are not attorneys. And few companies seek counsel to review policies before a claim arises. But underwriters, assisted by their counsel, increasingly are including litigation-focused provisions in their policies. Although these provisions often appear innocuous to readers unfamiliar with insurance litigation issues, they are like time bombs designed to explode in the event of a contested, litigated claim.
As coverage counsel, we witness firsthand the precarious positions policyholders are often left in due to the actions (or inactions) of their insurance carriers. A prime example of such a catch-22 scenario is when an insurer refuses to consent to a settlement offer while defending under a reservation of rights.
In the uncertain times ushered in by the COVID-19 pandemic, observers of the insurance law landscape can find footing in an old, familiar story: a single insured left deeply dissatisfied by her insurance provider’s coverage for an accident lawsuit against her. But in 
When an insurer pursues a judicial determination on its duty to defend and agrees to defend its insured retroactively only five months after its insured initially requested a defense, has it breached its duty to defend? In most jurisdictions, the answer would be “yes.” In California, for example, an insurer must afford an immediate and entire defense in response to a tendered claim that is potentially covered under the 
Since 2008, Minnesota has had a bad-faith statute that penalizes an insurance company for its unreasonable denial of a first-party insurance claim. But it was only earlier this month that a Minnesota appellate court interpreted the statute to require insurance companies to conduct a reasonable investigation and fairly evaluate its results to establish a reasonable basis for denying the claim. In so doing, the court rejected the interpretation offered by the insurance company: that the policyholder must prove there are no facts or evidence upon which the insurance company could rely to deny coverage. That interpretation would have allowed insurers to rely on post hoc justifications for denying coverage. The court’s rejection of that argument is an important development in bad-faith law that will likely affect both suits brought in Minnesota and those in other jurisdictions where courts might look to this decision for guidance in connection with many types of insurance claims. 
As 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.
Your factory is flooded and manufacturing line destroyed. A hacker breaks into your computer system and erases customer data even though you paid the ₿1,000 ransom in bitcoins. A jury just returned a $5 million verdict against your company and an employee who got into an accident while texting and driving to a client meeting. These may all be insured events, but how long can your business survive while you wait until your insurance company decides whether to pay your claim?