Property Insurance Coverage Insights

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By: Robinson & Cole LLP

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Latest from Property Insurance Coverage Insights

The United States District Court, District of New Jersey recently issued a decision that is helpful in defining the scope of business interruption coverage with respect to “period of restoration” and extended business income coverage. Milk Indus. Mgmt. Corp. v. Travelers Indem. Co. of Am., 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 147743 (D.N.J. Aug. 30, 2018). The insured in Milk Indus. was a distributor of dairy and other food products. The insured contracted with a supplier…
A New York trial court recently granted an insurer’s motion for summary judgment pursuant to the “Residence Premises Condition” contained in a homeowner’s insurance policy.  Aschmoneit v. Adirondack Insurance Exchange, 2018 N.Y. LEXIS 3418 (August 7, 2018), The court found that the insured did not reside at the home despite an affidavit asserting that he spent “most weekends” making repairs to the home. On May 24, 2013, a fire occurred at the insured’s home…
Under New Jersey law, an insurer cannot be held liable for bad faith in denying an insurance claim if the claim is “fairly debatable.” Therefore, unless a plaintiff can establish a right to summary judgment on the underlying cause of action for breach of contract, the coverage denial is considered “fairly debatable” and the court must dismiss the bad faith claim. See Pickett v. Lloyd’s, 131 N.J. 457, 473 (1993); Tarsio v. Provident Ins. Co.…
Property insurance policies typically require that the insured repair or replace damaged property before recovering on a replacement cost value (RCV) basis. Until then, the insured is entitled only to the actual cash value (ACV) of the damaged property. The U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey recently decided a case involving the proper method of calculating the insureds’ loss under a homeowners’ insurance policy following damage to the insureds’ property from Superstorm…
Notice provisions in property insurance policies typically require the insured to promptly provide notice of a loss to the insurer. Despite the plain language requiring prompt notice, some jurisdictions require that an insured’s late notice cause some prejudice to the insurer in order to make a finding of no coverage. The court’s decision in De La Rosa v. Fla. Peninsula Ins. Co., 2018 Fla. App. LEXIS 6893 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. May 16, 2018),…
In Interactive Communities Int’l v. Great Am. Ins. Co., 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 12410 (11th Cir. May 10, 2018), the insured sold “chits,” which have a specific monetary value and can be redeemed by loading their monetary value to a debit card. In order to redeem the chits, consumers could call into a computerized interactive voice response (IVR) system, type in a PIN, and have the funds loaded onto their debit card. Fraudsters identified…
Vacancy exclusions are commonplace in many homeowner policies, and typically exclude coverage for certain types of losses if the home is vacant and/or unoccupied. Litigation involving vacancy exclusions can arise when terms in the provision are not defined and an insured claims the terms are ambiguous. In Jarvis v. GeoVera Specialty Ins. Co., 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 11762 (11th Cir. May 3, 2018), the insured rented a house for several years and when the…
When does an excluded loss end and a covered “resulting loss” begin?  This thorny question was the subject of a recent decision out of the Southern District of Texas, EMS USA, Inc. v. The Travelers Lloyds Insurance Co.,  No. H-16-1443, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 54509 (S.D. Tex. Feb. 28, 2018),  adopted by EMS, USA, Inc. v. Travelers Lloyds Ins. Co., 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 52884 (S.D. Tex., Mar. 29, 2018). EMS involved a builder’s risk policy…
A typical claim for a homeowner will involve some type of damage to the property, which, in turn, prompts the insurer to perform an inspection of the insured property, so as to assess the cause and extent of the alleged damage. Depending on the nature of the claim, insurers may be able to have a solitary claims professional perform the inspection in a rather minimal amount of time, but that is not always the case.…
Typical first party property policies include provisions that address failure to maintain heat as excluded losses. The Eastern District of New York recently analyzed a specific endorsement requiring that heat be maintained at a particular temperature. In Read Prop. Group LLC v. Hamilton Ins. Co., No. 16-4573, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 54734 (E.D.N.Y. Mar. 30, 2018), a loss occurred when pipes froze and burst, causing water damage at one of 362 properties insured by…