A commentary on insurance coverage issues in Hawaii and beyond
The insured homeowners were successful in establishing coverage for water damage after demonstrating an exception to the exclusion relied upon by the insurer was ambiguous. Plantek v. Town of Hamburg, 948 N.Y.S. 2d 797 (N.Y. App. Div. 2012).
The insureds' basement was flooded after an abutting water main ruptured. Allstate denied coverage…
The issue faced by the Minnesota Supreme Court was whether the insurer had a duty to disclose the insured's interest in obtaining a written explanation of an arbitration award that identified the claims of recovery and the portions of the award attributable to each. Remodeling Dimensions, Inc. v. Integrity Mut. Ins. Co., 2012…
The U. S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida was confronted with determining whether Florida would follow the manifestation or injury in fact trigger in Axis Surplus Ins. Co. v. Contravest Constr. Co., 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 104502 (D. Fla. June 5, 2012).
The homeowner's association sued the insureds for…
Judge Kobayashi of the U.S. District Court, District of Hawaii, largely followed earlier precedent established by Judge Mollway in finding no coverage for construction defect claims. See Evanston v. Nagano, 2012 WL 3800320 (D. Hawaii Aug. 31, 2012).
Evanston issued several liability policies to the insured contractor from 2002 and 2011. The insured…
Receipt of notice of a claim to the excess carrier after the jury awarded damages was insufficient to enforce coverage. See Berkley Reg'l Ins. Co. v. Philadelphia Indem. Ins. Co., 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 15998 (5th Cir. Aug. 2, 2012).
The underlying case involved a slip-and-fall by a dentist on the premises…
The Colorado Court of Appeals considered whether counterclaims against the insured for alleged faulty construction work were based in contract or constituted allegations of an "accident" under the policy. TCD, Inc. v. Am. Family Mutual Ins. Co., 2012 WL 1231964 (Colo. Ct. App. April 12, 2012).
The developer, Frisco Gateway Center, LLC, contracted…
Robert Keown, the insured, was a real estate agent. See Keown v. Tudor Ins. Co., 2012 Haw. App. LEIS 801(Haw. Ct. App. Aug. 16, 2012). Keown had a professional liability policy with Tudor.
The insured was also one of several unpaid directors of Koloa Early School, a non-profit entity on Kauai. The School operated…
Damon Key will host a film festival geared towards the legal field September 1 to 6, 2012. The films will be presented at the Honolulu Museum's Doris Duke Theater. Afternoon and evening presentations are being offered.
The films include:
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In a long awaited decision regarding California's liability for damages caused by the Stringfellow Acid Pits case, the California Supreme Court adopted the "all sums" method of allocating coverage among multiple insurers for long-tail claims. Further, the court concluded that stacking of policy limits was consistent with the CGL policy language. See State v. …
The court considered the number of occurrences when food infecting several hundred people with E. coli was prepared and served at two different places. Republic Underwriters Ins. Co. v. Moore, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 14907 (10th Cir. July 20, 2012).
The insured restaurant prepared and served E. coli-contaminated food between August 15…
