Commentary and analysis on the
law of insurance coverage

Category Archives: Occurrence

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

Can You Assign Your Insurance Policy to Someone Else? No, but…

Assignment  The law is riddled with jargon.  Unfamiliar phrases and concepts, inexplicable to non-lawyers, serve to exclude the uninitiated and to further the legal profession’s interest in making lawyers indispensable to lay people.  One of the more peculiar legal jargon phrases is “chose in action.”  These ordinary English words, when arranged in this way, make no sense except to lawyers and judges.  This obscure legal concept was a key to an important recent decision by the New Jersey Supreme Court concerning whether policyholders can legally assign their insurance rights to others. Read More

If you’d like us to notify you whenever there is a new post on The Insurance Recovery Journal, subscribing will make that happen. There’s no charge and we won’t use your email address for any purpose other than to send the notifications.

[simpleSubscribeForm]