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In National Railroad Passenger Corp. v. Aspen Specialty Ins. Co., 2016 U.S. App. LEXIS 16074 (2d. Cir. Aug. 31, 2016), Amtrak sought the entire $675 million of available coverage from a number of its insurers for damages incurred as a result of Superstorm Sandy.  Most of Amtrak’s damages resulted from flooding of tunnels under the East and Hudson Rivers.  The trial court granted summary judgment for the insurers finding that the damages caused by seawater entering the tunnels was subject to the policies’ $125 million flood sublimit, that corrosion of equipment that occurred after the water was pumped out was not an “ensuing loss,” and that Amtrak failed to establish that it was entitled to coverage under the Demolition and Increased Cost of Construction (“DICC”) provision.  National Railroad Passenger Corp. v. Arch Specialty Ins. Co., 124 F. Supp. 3d 264 (S.D.N.Y. 2015). Amtrak appealed.

The Second Circuit held that even though there were three definitions of flood in the applicable policies, the inundation of seawater in the tunnels was a “flood” within the meaning of all three definitions.  In reaching this conclusion, the court noted that the fact that there were three different definitions of the term “flood” in the policies “did not render the term ambiguous.”Continue Reading Ambiguity And Ensuing Loss: The Second Circuit Affirms The Southern District Of New York’s Holdings In a $675 Million Superstorm Sandy Insurance Coverage Dispute

Drone mapping provides insurance companies with an easy, fast and accurate method of documenting a scene and preserving key details  while also letting the process of clean-up and reconstruction begin as quickly as possible. Recently, Dronotec, a start-up company specializing in drone inspection for insurance companies conducted a case study to determine just how much money this drone mapping was saving insurance companies. Dronotec’s founder, Emilien Rose, worked as a loss assessor in France and Australia for 10 years and conducted assessments of about 8,000 claims. Rose believes that Dronetec and drone mapping can really save time and money for insurers.

For example, recently a fire in France consumed 5 acres of a vacation destination on the coast. Once the insurance company came in to assess the damages, they realized that the sheer size of the site posed quite a challenge. Moreover, so much of the property was damaged by the fire, inspectors could not enter the properties or inspect the roofs without the threat of personal injury. A plane attempted to capture photos but many of the photos were not clear or sharp enough to use. However, the loss adjuster recommend a drone to do the mapping of the scene. In about 10 minutes, the drone collected more than 300 geo-tagged photos flying about 180 feet over the property. The images were uploaded to a drone mapping program, and three hours later a 2-D map and 3-D model of the property and the damages were available. The high degree of accuracy of not only the photos but the mapping improved the likelihood of identifying the cause of the accident exponentially. And the insurance company’s team members were able to collaborate and review the mapping in one cloud-based space. In this one case, the use of drone mapping saved this French insurance company about €99,985,000 (or about $110,600,000).

The ability to quickly process claims is very helpful to insurance companies with large scale disasters that have many claims filed related to the same incident.
Continue Reading Drone Mapping the Way of the Future for Insurance Companies

On April 6, 2016, New York’s Second Department issued a decision in Provencal, LLC v. Tower Insurance Company of New York, 2016 N.Y. App. LEXIS 2529 (Apr. 6, 2016) holding that an insurer does not waive application of an exclusion in an insurance policy if the insurer omits the language of the exclusion in…

The Virginia Supreme Court recently clarified that, even if the suit limitation in a standard fire insurance policy incorporates the language required by Virginia Code, the suit limitation language is not subject to statutory tolling of statutory limitation periods.  In Allstate Property and Casualty Ins. Co. v. Ploutis, 2015 Va. LEXIS 109 (Sept. 17,…

Many insurance policies include exclusions that are modified by endorsement. An analysis of the specific language in both the exclusionary provision and the modifying endorsement are critical in determining whether a peril is excluded by the policy.

Evonthe Hayes v. Southern Fidelity Insurance Company, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 14692 (E.D. La. October 15, 2014)…

On November 4 and 5, a number of our Insurance and Reinsurance Practice Group members attended the 1st Annual Bad Faith Litigation Strategies ExecuSummit, which was held near New Haven, Connecticut. Deb Vennos and Greg Varga were panelists, and presented on the topic of Unfair Trade Practice Acts nationwide. The ExecuSummit was well-attended by…

As we reported in March the issue of whether Named Storm deductibles apply will likely be the subject of Sandy litigation. As a reminder, many state insurance departments issued bulletins indicating that insurance companies should not impose hurricane deductibles on homeowners, mainly because the classification of Sandy shifted from a hurricane to a post-tropical storm…

In a series of recent sua sponte decisions in six Superstorm Sandy cases, Judges Seybert and Feuerstein dismissed extra contractual claims and dismissed all but the first named plaintiffs’ claims pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 20. The cases involve up to two hundred and seventeen named plaintiffs (perhaps in an attempt to avoid separate…

In Austin-Casares v. Safeco Ins. Co., 2013 Conn. LEXIS 409 (Dec. 3, 2013), the Connecticut Supreme Court, in a case of first impression, reversed a trial court’s decision, which held that the suit limitation provision unambiguously precluded a mortgagee from intervening in a suit when the motion to intervene was filed after the…