{"id":335,"date":"2020-05-18T19:32:25","date_gmt":"2020-05-18T23:32:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/insurancelaw\/?p=335"},"modified":"2020-05-18T19:35:36","modified_gmt":"2020-05-18T23:35:36","slug":"duane-morris-helps-insurance-industry-to-a-major-win-on-covid-losses-for-business-interruption-before-the-pennsylvania-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/insurancelaw\/2020\/05\/18\/duane-morris-helps-insurance-industry-to-a-major-win-on-covid-losses-for-business-interruption-before-the-pennsylvania-supreme-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Duane Morris Helps Insurance Industry to a Major Win on COVID Losses for Business Interruption Before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Damon N. Vocke<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In the bellwether case of Joseph Tambellini, Inc. v. Erie Insurance Exchange<\/em>, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was petitioned under its King\u2019s Bench powers to assume plenary jurisdiction of an insurance coverage dispute that had been filed in the Court of Common Pleas, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.\u00a0 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 \u201cInsurance Industry Amici\u201d), to oppose this extraordinary petition. <\/p>\n

The Insurance Industry Amici argued that business interruption lawsuits will present many individualized issues relating to wide variations in insurance policies \u2014 such as coverage grants, exclusions, and loss determinations \u2014 along with other unique factual circumstances pertaining to each business policyholder. Thus, any decision on Tambellini\u2019s claim under one policy could not reasonably be extrapolated across numerous other cases that have yet to be filed.<\/p>\n

The Insurance Industry Amici further argued that the Court should not decide important legal issues without a factual record, review by the lower courts, and the participation of all interested parties, because any petition requesting that the Court assume extraordinary jurisdiction or for exercise of King\u2019s Bench powers must show service upon all persons who may be affected. Further, if the Court were to retroactively impose a new, extra-contractual risk on insurance carriers, this could result in insurance company insolvencies, creating an anticompetitive market and adversely affecting the availability of affordable insurance in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

On May 14, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied the petition.\u00a0 It declined to use its King\u2019s Bench powers in a per curiam<\/em> order.<\/p>\n

This order is a huge \u201cwin\u201d for the insurance industry.\u00a0 Accelerating and consolidating all of the COVID insurance disputes for business interruption would have been a terrible development on its own and also an awful precedent both in Pennsylvania and around the nation.<\/p>\n

The \u201cwin\u201d also helps to extinguish a threat to the insurance industry from a separate recent opinion by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision in Friends of DiVito v. Wolf<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 In that case, a state political candidate had challenged Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf\u2019s Emergency Order which closed all non-essential businesses and offices, including DiVito\u2019s campaign headquarters, whereas his incumbent opponent\u2019s office remained open. In a 4-3 decision, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld the Governor\u2019s powers to issue the emergency order, concluding that the coronavirus constitutes a \u201cnatural disaster.\u201d This characterization of a \u201cnatural disaster\u201d posed a threat that the Court might read insurance-contract language in the same way.\u00a0 This was the approach of the plaintiffs\u2019 coverage counsel in Tambellini even though the DiVito <\/em>Court did not decide the central issue of whether coronavirus causes physical damage, and even though insurance coverage was not at issue. The \u201cwin\u201d in the Court\u2019s unanimous Tambellini decision undercuts any such use of the DiVito characterization of a \u201cnatural disaster\u201d going forward with respect to insurance coverage disputes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Damon N. Vocke In the bellwether case of Joseph Tambellini, Inc. v. Erie Insurance Exchange, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was petitioned under its King\u2019s Bench powers to assume plenary jurisdiction of an insurance coverage dispute that had been filed in the Court of Common Pleas, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.\u00a0 The high court was asked to … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Duane Morris Helps Insurance Industry to a Major Win on COVID Losses for Business Interruption Before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[397,382,381,361,19,398],"ppma_author":[417],"class_list":["post-335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-insurance-business-and-regulatory-developments","tag-business-interruption-coverage","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-damon-vocke","tag-insurance-coverage","tag-kings-bench-powers"],"authors":[{"term_id":417,"user_id":6,"is_guest":0,"slug":"duanemorris3","display_name":"Duane Morris","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/843ff6e7a8fe5fc92109b47a45f34b6cf0ea499e6e788db23456c838b0ae6747?s=96&d=blank&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/insurancelaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/insurancelaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/insurancelaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/insurancelaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/insurancelaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/insurancelaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/insurancelaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/insurancelaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/insurancelaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/insurancelaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}