Berkshire Hathaway and one of its units on Monday urged a Pennsylvania federal court to toss a restaurant’s suit seeking insurance coverage for losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing that a virus exclusion “plainly applies” to the restaurant’s claims.
Berkshire Hathaway and National Fire are represented by Robert L. Byer, Julie S. Greenberg and Damon N. Vocke of Duane Morris LLP.
To read the full text of this article, please visit the Law360 website.
In the bellwether case of Joseph Tambellini, Inc. v. Erie Insurance Exchange, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was petitioned under its King’s Bench powers to assume plenary jurisdiction of an insurance coverage dispute that had been filed in the Court of Common Pleas, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. The high court was asked to decide critical legal issues that would have impacted thousands of other insurance claims that might arise in the future from the COVID-19 pandemic. Duane Morris was retained by insurer trade associations, including APCIA, NAMIC, PAMIC, and the Insurance Federation of Pennsylvania (the “Insurance Industry Amici”), to oppose this extraordinary petition.
To read the full text of this post by Duane Morris partner Damon Vocke, please visit the Duane Morris Insurance Law Blog.
On April 10, President Trump invoked his authority under 50 U.S.C. 1431 et seq. to authorize the VA to indemnify contractors “with regard to transactions directly responsive to the COVID-19 national emergency.” This statutory authority may provide FAR 52.250-1 contractual indemnity protection for VA contractors against insurance coverage gaps related to COVID-19.
To read the full text of this post by Duane Morris attorneys Matthew Freeman and Michael Schrier, please visit the Duane Morris Government Contracts and Litigation Blog.
by Max H. Stern and Jessica E. La Londe
A key issue that many insurance companies will face in the upcoming weeks and months is whether their policies provide coverage for policyholders’ business interruption losses from the COVID-19 crisis. This is not merely an academic question: the first coverage case on this issue was filed in Louisiana this week (Cajun Conti, LLC, et al. v. Certain Underwriters at Lloyd’s London, et al.) and legislatures are already considering legislation that may significantly impact the insurance industry (see New Jersey’s proposed legislation on insurance coverage for COVID-19 business interruption claims and letter from members of Congress to insurer trade groups encouraging the acceptance of business interruption coverage for COVID-19 losses).
To read the full text of this post, please visit the Duane Morris Insurance Law Blog.
Based on growing concerns over the spread of COVID-19, large public gatherings, such as conferences and other events, are being cancelled at an increasing rate throughout the United States, and internationally. More than 50,000 people signed an online petition requesting the cancellation of the multi-day South by Southwest event in Austin, Texas. That and other conferences and large events are being cancelled daily. With at least 3,300 world-wide deaths, and approximately 200 confirmed cases in the U.S., large public events will continue to be cancelled for the near future.
Impacting the decision to cancel conferences and other large public events, large corporations are issuing policies (changing almost daily) such as: no nonessential travel; employees can attend conferences only if the conference has a travel ban from certain countries (i.e., you, employee, can attend the conference, but only if the conference bans attendance of people from certain COVID-19 troubled countries); and no attending public events larger than 10 people (last week the policy was 1,000 people or more). Most recently, companies have issued bans on guests being allowed onto their premises, and/or issued a mandatory work from home policy.
What are the legal ramifications of each of these edicts? Or of cancellations of conferences and other large public events? What happens to the contracts for each of these events, such as contracts with the attendees, the site, the vendors, the airlines, consultants, speakers, performers etc. What are the legal ramifications and what will be the financial impact from these cancellations? Will you be able to make an insurance claim to protect you?
Insurance companies are starting to see numerous notifications under Event Cancellation insurance. But will the cancellation be covered by your policy? Are you trying to submit a claim for cancelling an event due to the attendees’ fear, or event organizer’s fear of spreading or catching COVID-19 even though there is no ban on the event going forward? That may not be a covered claim. While you may decide to cancel the event, just know that the cancellation may not be covered because the cancellation was not beyond the control of the event organizer. Additionally, the typical cancellation insurance policy likely contains exclusions that come into play (e.g., the Communicable Disease exclusion – excluding coverage where fear causes a cancellation due to the World Health Organization’s world epidemic determination). Don’t assume your Event Cancellation Insurance will cover your expenses related to canceling.
Other insurance companies are seeing notifications of claims for Business Interruption coverage. Presenting a covered claim under a Business Interruption Insurance policy may be difficult. The first question will be: Does the cause of loss qualify under the policy for coverage? Recently, the UK made COVID-19 a registered notifiable disease to allow insurance claims to be filed. What will happen in the U.S.? And, what is the “loss”? Are there applicable exclusions precluding coverage? Unless you have a specific and unusual insurance policy, recovering under an insurance policy for expenses due to COVID-19 may be very difficult.
These are just some of the legal issued to be sorted out in the coming months. But without recourse to insurance coverage, the contract disputes become even more key.
For more on Force Majeure Contract Clauses and COVID-19, see the March 4, 2020 Duane Morris Alert.
