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Insurance Litigation Severe Weather Natural Disasters

Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP

How Your Business Can Weather Big Sur’s Latest Landslide

After heavy rains on March 30, 2024, a section of the southbound lane of famous Highway 1, which sits atop dramatic cliffs near Big Sur, collapsed and crumbled into the Pacific Ocean. The incident occurred near Rocky Creek...more

Woodruff Sawyer

Concurrent Cause Issues in Insurance: How to Unravel the Language

Woodruff Sawyer on

Property insurance policies are complex legal contracts. That’s because the insurance industry has its own language and processes that can be subject to multiple interpretations. ...more

Butler Weihmuller Katz Craig LLP

Wind v. Flood in the Wake of Hurricane Ian

In late September, 2022, Hurricane Ian made landfall in Southwest Florida and traveled across the state.  The storm brought with it significant storm surge that caused substantial flooding.  The storm also was accompanied by...more

Butler Weihmuller Katz Craig LLP

Nuanced Aspects of Hurricane Claims: Civil Authority, Ordinance or Law, and Mobile Home Claims

The adjustment of hurricane claims sometimes involve discrete issues regarding either special coverages under insurance policies or different types of structures governed by a patchwork of federal and state laws....more

Butler Snow LLP

Trends in Weather-Related Insurance Filings in Federal Courts

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The United States federal court system periodically publishes reports (called “Just the Facts”) addressing trends facing the federal judiciary. On November 16, 2021, the U.S. Courts released its latest “Just the Facts,”...more

Cozen O'Connor

When Better Late Than Never Isn’t Good Enough: Florida Federal Court Grants Summary Judgment For Insurer In Late-Reported...

Cozen O'Connor on

On September 27, 2021, Judge Jose Martinez of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida granted summary judgment in favor of Scottsdale Insurance Company in LMP Holdings Inc. v. Scottsdale Ins. Co., case...more

Cozen O'Connor

Louisiana Federal Court Upholds Applicability of Anti-Concurrent Causation Exclusion for Hurricane Damage

Cozen O'Connor on

In a timely reaffirmation of the Fifth Circuit’s 2007 ruling in Leonard v. Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co., a Louisiana federal court recently upheld the application of an insurance policy’s Anti-Concurrent Causation Clause (“ACC”)...more

Butler Weihmuller Katz Craig LLP

Florida’s Second DCA: Coverage Can Remain at Issue Even After Insurer’s Payment

A Florida appellate court recently made clear that the issue of insurance coverage can remain in dispute, even where an insurer has already paid out some benefits to an insured in connection with a claim.  Avatar Prop. & Cas....more

Chartwell Law

Plaintiff Maintains Initial Burden of Proof to Establish Causation in Hurricane Irma Claims

Chartwell Law on

Florida Statute §627.70132 allows an insured to make a claim for an alleged hurricane loss within three years of the event. This statute, however, is not a waiver of the insured’s initial burden of proof to establish...more

Cozen O'Connor

New Hurricane Harvey Opinion Provides a Roadmap to Defeating Common Policyholder Attorney Tactics

Cozen O'Connor on

Policyholders attorneys often try to skip the threshold steps of bringing their client’s claim within coverage and allocating between covered and non-covered causes of loss.  Instead, the policyholder attorney would have the...more

Carlton Fields

Flooded: Court Finds “Named Windstorm” Coverage, and Not Flood Sublimit, Applies to Superstorm Sandy Water Damage Claim

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When the National Weather Service names a storm heading in your direction, you know to expect wind and water. This can create a quandary for property insurers. Is water damage from a named windstorm caused by the flood or the...more

Zelle  LLP

Climate Change for Insurers: When Politics Fail, Flood the Courts

Zelle LLP on

This article follows on from a series of previous articles seeking to address climate change litigation in the context of insurance and reinsurance. Three different, but important, decisions in December 2019 have once again...more

Carlton Fields

New York Appellate Court Affirms Denial of Discovery Into Other Hurricane Sandy Claims

Carlton Fields on

In Knickerbocker Village Inc. v. Lexington Insurance Co., New York’s Appellate Division, First Judicial Department, dictated a clear rule for single-insured cases regarding the discovery of an insurer’s treatment of insurance...more

Ward and Smith, P.A.

What! My Flood Policy Doesn’t Cover Flood Damage?! This, and Other Pitfalls of NFIP Flood Insurance Policies

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Congress created the National Flood Insurance Program (the "NFIP") to help make flood insurance more affordable in higher-risk areas. FEMA oversees the program and writes the terms of the Standard Flood Insurance Policy...more

Robinson+Cole Property Insurance Coverage...

The Southern District Finds Unambiguous Policy Language Controls NYU’s Superstorm Sandy Claim

The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York recently granted an insurer’s motion for summary judgment in a case arising from Superstorm Sandy based on unambiguous policy language providing a...more

Robinson+Cole Property Insurance Coverage...

District of New Jersey Applies Anti-Concurrent Causation Provision to Superstorm Sandy Claim

In a recent decision arising out of Superstorm Sandy, the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey confirmed the enforceability of anti-concurrent causation provisions. Zero Barnegat Bay, LLC v. Lexington...more

Butler Weihmuller Katz Craig LLP

Alabama and Mississippi Insurance Law Questions Following Hurricane Nate

Hurricane Nate made landfall on the Mississippi Gulf Coast near the city of Biloxi on Sunday, October 8, 2017, as a Category 1 Hurricane. The eastern quadrant of the storm’s center also passed over significant portions of...more

Cozen O'Connor

Flood Exclusion Unambiguously Excludes Coverage For $49.5M In Hurricane Sandy Losses Caused By Storm Surge

Cozen O'Connor on

Cozen O’Connor attorneys Thomas McKay III, Richard Mackowsky, Charles Jesuit, and Melissa Brill recently secured summary judgment from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York in favor of Great...more

Robinson+Cole Property Insurance Coverage...

Hurricane Harvey, the Texas Supreme Court, and Anti-Concurrent Causation

Many commercial and residential property insurance claims arising from major hurricanes like Hurricane Harvey present damage caused by multiple causes of loss, some of which may be covered (e.g., wind) and some of which may...more

Carlton Fields

Hurricane Harvey: Insurance Statutes and Regulations

Carlton Fields on

Because Hurricane Harvey claims may be taking you and your colleagues to different states, we thought it might be helpful to bear in mind the claims adjusting standards and regulations in those states that will likely be...more

Zelle  LLP

Insurance Takeaways From Texas’ New Hailstorm Bill

Zelle LLP on

On Feb. 1, 2017, the Texas Department of Insurance published the results of its presentation to the Texas Legislature titled: “Interim Charges: The Cost of Weather-Related Property Claims and Related Litigation.” Notably, the...more

Robins Kaplan LLP

When is a Flood a “Flood”: East Coast Edition

Robins Kaplan LLP on

Last month, heavy rainstorms in California brought to the forefront the issue of what is a “flood” under California law, particularly in regard to rain and surface water. We noted a California court held “flood” in its plain...more

Robinson+Cole Property Insurance Coverage...

New Jersey Appellate Division Applies Anti-Concurrent Causation Clause to Bar Combined Flood/Sewer Backup Claim

Frequent readers of the blog will appreciate that disputes involving the application of anti-concurrent causation language in the context of claims for flood or water damage have appeared with some frequency in recent years....more

Robins Kaplan LLP

When it Rains it Floods: California Rainstorms and Flood Insurance

Robins Kaplan LLP on

Until very recently, the scarcity of water and the decline in oil prices in California prompted the joke that oil was being used as fracking fluid to get water out of the ground. In the last week, however, so much rain has...more

Robinson+Cole Property Insurance Coverage...

Hurricane Sandy, Flood, and Sewer Backup: New Jersey Federal Court Confirms Anti-Concurrent Causation Bars Insured’s Claim

As we have written about before on this blog, the water damage caused by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012 gave rise to important questions concerning the applicability of so-called “anti-concurrent causation” clauses. Such was...more

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