Commentary and analysis on the
law of insurance coverage

Category Archives: Efficient Proximate Cause

When an Absolute Pollution Exclusion is Not So Absolute

Smoke Stacks    In the years following its introduction in the early 1980s, the Absolute Pollution Exclusion was sometimes used in highly creative and questionable ways to preclude coverage for claims that were only remotely connected to pollution.  As the years passed, however, courts across the country began to narrow the scope and application of the exclusion to cases involving “traditional industrial pollution.”  Continuing that trend, the Washington Supreme Court recently precluded a carrier from using the Absolute Pollution Exclusion to deny a claim involving carbon monoxide poisoning. Read More

Florida Supreme Court Sides With Policyholders on Concurrent Causation

cause-image  Sometimes — maybe even often — a loss arises because of a cause that is, at the same time, both covered and not covered by an insurance policy.  For example, a storm surge caused by the wind from a hurricane (covered) results in the swamping of an ocean-front home with sea water, which is commonly known as a “flood” (not covered).  What’s a court to do when the carrier issues its inevitable coverage denial to the policyholder? Read More

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