Sometimes you read a decision and it’s hard to understand how there really were two plausible sides to the dispute. Arrowood Indemnity Company v The Lubrizol Corporation is one such a decision. There, a policyholder sold back its liability coverage for claims “arising out of” certain named environmental sites. When the policyholder subsequently received a PRP notice [...]
Category Archives: Environmental Insurance
The Intersection of Subrogation and Environmental Law — The Ninth Circuit’s Tyranny of Logic over Common Sense
In a decision that exalts casuistry over common sense, the Ninth Circuit recently held that an insurer who reimbursed $2.4 million in CERCLA response costs to its policyholder had no subrogation rights against the potentially responsible parties that actually caused the contamination in the first place. That holding turns upside down the most basic principles of insurance law. Chubb Custom Insurance [...]
Sudden and Accidental Pollution in Massachusetts — Not Always Fatal To Coverage
In some jurisdictions, an environmental claim under a liability policy with a “sudden and accidental” pollution exclusion has the same prospect of success as a due process claim under the strict scrutiny standard — strict in theory, fatal in practice. In Massachusetts, however, sudden and accidental pollution exclusions have sometimes been less fatal, as evidenced by the recent decision [...]