Hunton Insurance Recovery Blog (2024)

In an insurance coverage lawsuit brought by 3M Co. and certain of 3M’s wholly owned subsidiaries, including Aearo LLC, the Delaware Superior Court recently ruled that 3M’s payment of litigation costs on Aearo’s behalf do not count toward Aearo’s $250,000 Self-Insured Retention (SIR) contained in several of its legacy policies. This ruling is significant because 3M and Aearo seek, among other things, more than $370 million in defense fees for nearly 300,000 product liability lawsuits consolidated in a multidistrict litigation in the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida and state court in Minnesota. Parent companies, and those looking to acquire, should be aware of legacy policy provisions like those expressly prohibiting satisfaction of an SIR by anyone except the named insured.

By Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP

Jae Lynn Huckaba, an associate in Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP’s Insurance Coverage practice, will serve as Chair of the Miami-Dade Bar Association Young Lawyer Section’s Community Service Committee for the upcoming 2024-2025 bar year. The YLS recently announced the relaunch of the Community Service Committee, a committee dedicated to giving back to the citizens of Miami through community outreach and service projects.

Recent high-profile cases involving Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) have spotlighted the need for robust directors and officers (D&O) liability insurance tailored to cybersecurity executives. The SEC charges against the former SolarWinds CISO—which were not dismissed in the highly-anticipated decision truncating the SEC’s case against the company—and the 2022 criminal conviction of Uber’s former CISO underscore the growing personal liability risks faced by security leaders.

The highest court in Massachusetts recently held that term “Flood” and the associated phrase “surface waters,” as used in two all-risk insurance policies, is ambiguous in the context of water that accumulated on a parapet roof and rooftop courtyard, thereby negating the insurers’ attempt to limit coverage to a sublimited coverage for “Flood.”

If your company has been impacted by today’s network outage issues, know that insurance may be able to help. Many, but not all, cyber and technology errors and omissions (“Tech E&O”) insurance policies include broad dependent business interruption coverage for losses caused by system failures of a company or vendor on which you rely to operate your business.

A recent New Jersey Superior Court decision highlights the risks policyholders face when officers or directors serve dual-capacity roles, such as participating on boards for multiple companies.

By Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP

Insurance policies typically require a policyholder to provide notice to the insurer. And the notice requirements can vary between policies. That is why the language of the notice provision can be critical to interpreting its requirements. But the language is not always clear. In a recent article published by Mealey’s Insurance, Hunton attorneys Syed Ahmad and Yosef Itkin examine this type of scenario where a court determined that the language of a policy’s notice requirement was indeed ambiguous and construed it in favor of the policyholder, finding that the notice requirement was satisfied.

Last week, in , a Texas federal court held that an insurer had no duty to cover a personal injury judgment in excess of the $1 million policy limit. The holding reminds parties in Texas to carefully consider the most basic—and sometimes very particular—requirements surrounding Stowers demands.

The Georgia legislature recently amended O.C.G.A. § 9-11-67.1, the statute that sets forth requirements for pre-answer settlement demands in motor vehicle personal injury cases, to temper use of such pre-answer settlement demands to set up bad faith failure-to-settle claims against insurers. These pre-answer demands are known as Holt demands based on the Georgia Supreme Court case of S. Gen. Ins. Co. v. Holt, 262 Ga. 267, 416 S.E.2d 274 (1992), which established that an insurer which fails to settle a claim for its insured—and is found to have done so negligently, fraudulently, or in bad faith—may be liable for damages in excess of the insurance policy limits.