California Supreme Court To Hear Appeal on 1/8/2009 of Landmark Environmental Insurance Recovery Victory by AKO in Favor of Its Client the State of California
1/8/2009
San Francisco, California - On January 8, 2009 in San Francisco, the California Supreme Court will hear five defendant insurance companies' appeal of an Appellate Court's January 12, 2007 decision in favor of the State of California in an insurance coverage dispute regarding cleanup of the Stringfellow Acid Pits. The Appellate Court, Fourth District, ruled that when a policyholder cannot distinguish between the covered and non-covered portions of a loss, the burden of proof rests with insurance providers, who must cover a loss fully if they cannot conclusively demarcate the non-covered part of the loss.
If upheld, the Appellate Court decision will provide policyholders with an important bulwark against the insurance industry's overbroad application of anti-concurrent causation clauses, which assert that if an excluded cause of loss occurs concurrently with a non-excluded cause, all coverage is negated. Insurance industry attempts to wipe out covered claims with the anti-concurrent causation clause have captured national attention in homeowners' insurance disputes arising in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, in which insurers have invoked flood exclusions to avoid paying for damage caused partly, mainly or wholly by wind, a covered cause. Because insurance law is determined on the state level, precedents established in California, the nation's most populous state, are highly influential.
In 2005, Anderson Kill won a jury victory for the State of California against CNA and other insurance providers in a suit seeking coverage for cleanup of the Stringfellow Acid Pits, a toxic waste site. The verdict was recognized by VerdictSearch as one of the 60 top verdicts in the United States in 2005. Nineteen out of twenty-four defendant insurance companies have settled, and the State has recovered gross settlements of over $121 million.
In State of California v. Underwriters at Lloyd's of London et al., No 239784/RIC-381555, the jury rejected all coverage defenses raised by the insurance companies including "willful acts" concealment and lost policy defenses. The jury found that CNA, Wausau, Yosemite, Horace Mann (ACE) and Stonebridge each breached their insurance contracts with the State.
For more information, please contact:
Robert M. Horkovich
rhorkovich@andersonkill.com
(212) 278-1322
To view, the "State of California's Jury Trial Victory Against CNA et al in Stringfellow Cleanup Named Top Insurance Recovery Verdict of 2005"(5/22/06), click here.
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