California Court of Appeal Opens Doors for Construction Defect Claims Outside of the Right to Repair Act
In Larson v. Liberty Mutual Fire Insurance Co., the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that, under Hawaii law, unambiguous broad settlement release language and the two-year tort statute of limitations barred claims that...more
Numerous class action suits have been filed against auto insurers regarding the valuation of vehicles that are total losses. These cases typically allege that insurers are undervaluing vehicles in some common way or in...more
In Ruderman v. Liberty Mut. Grp., Inc., No. 21-817, 2022 WL 244086 (2d Cir. Jan. 27, 2022), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that reclassification of a claimant’s disability from one that is...more
Although many companies that historically used asbestos in their products have gone bankrupt, there are still many that have managed to survive. How? In some — perhaps many — cases, the answer may be due in no small part to...more
A primary insurer has a duty of good faith to an excess insurer to attempt to negotiate a settlement with a third-party claimant within the primary insurer’s limits. However, determining whether that duty of good faith was...more
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently released two opinions involving multiple liability claims against an insured with insufficient policy limits. Both cases involved appeals from summary judgment orders in bad...more
In Balfour Beatty Construction, LLC v. Liberty Mutual Fire Insurance Company, No. 19-20216 (August 3, 2020), the Fifth Circuit determined that Liberty Mutual’s policy does not cover a construction company’s claim for window...more
Manleen Singh Sits Down Via Zoom With Uzma Saghir, Senior Corporate Counsel At Liberty Mutual In Boston, Massachusetts. ...more
Must an insurer consider the possibility that putative class members (i.e., potential class members not named in the complaint) other than the proposed class representatives (i.e., the plaintiffs named in the complaint to...more
Mariano and Joanne Mattei filed a complaint in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County against Liberty Mutual and the claims adjuster assigned to Mariano Mattei’s claim for coverage relating to a 2015 motor vehicle...more
A policy provision that has been rarely litigated, but often disputed, is the exclusion for above-ground electrical transmission and distribution lines....more
A recent New York case highlights the importance of thoroughly analyzing all contract language in minimizing project risk. In Gilbane Bldg. Co./TDX Construction Corp. v. St. Paul Fire & Mar. Ins. Co., the Court of Appeals of...more
In Liberty Mutual Fire Insurance Co. v. Fowlkes Plumbing LLC, 17-cv-010-GHD-DAS, 2018 WL 842169 (N.D. Miss. Feb. 12, 2018), the District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi held that the subrogation waiver of...more
A feature of 28 U.S.C. § 1332, the diversity-jurisdiction statute, may make you scratch your head and wonder why it’s there. In the Seventh Circuit’s March 15, 2018 decision in Hyland v. Liberty Mutual Fire Ins. Co., No....more
A torrent of alerts have been flooding e-mail inboxes regarding the California Supreme Court’s decision in McMillin v. Superior Court, to reverse the Liberty Mutual Insurance Company v. Brookfield Crystal Cove LLC (2013)...more
This case arose from an accident at the General Motors plant in Kansas City, Kansas, where an electrician employed by Capital Electric Construction Company, Inc. was severely injured due to negligence by Solaris Power...more
A Missouri district court recently held a mandatory arbitration provision was unenforceable in an insurance coverage dispute after an electrician was injured on the job and won an uncontested judgment in state court against...more
An issue that repeatedly comes up in construction disputes is the scope of an arbitration agreement. Courts generally interpret agreements to arbitrate broadly, and, where the arbitrability of a specific claim has been at...more
In Hyland v. Liberty Mutual Fire Ins. Co., No. 1:15-cv-01264-JES-JEH, 2017 WL 3388161 (C.D. Ill. Aug. 7, 2017), the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois granted plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment for...more
After previously holding that various claims against the insured, Pella, alleged property damage caused by an “occurrence,” thus triggering Liberty Mutual Insurance Company’s (“Liberty”) coverage obligations under various CGL...more
Many property insurance policies that provide coverage for business interruption losses also include “extra expense” coverage for reasonable and necessary extra costs to temporarily continue as nearly as possible normal...more
We have previously featured New Jersey District Court decisions addressing “unequivocal” denials in the context of policies’ suit limitation provisions. In the latest, Ryan v. Liberty Mut. Fire Ins. Co., No. 14-6308...more
In order to be arbitrable, a dispute must fall within the scope of the parties’ operative arbitration agreement. Here, a non-signatory to the relevant agreement was seeking to “invoke an arbitration provision that was not...more
On May 3, 2016, the New York Court of Appeals issued a much-anticipated and significant decision on allocation and exhaustion issues in the context of long-tail liability insurance. The case was styled Viking Pump, Inc. v....more
On Plaintiffs’ motion to compel discovery in a bad faith action against first-party property insurer Liberty Mutual Fire Insurance Company (“Liberty Mutual”), an Alabama federal court limited, but allowed, discovery related...more