Insurance Law

By Stephen Raucher and Michael Sohigian

Introduction

In 2020, policyholders scored a significant victory at the California Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of vertical exhaustion in the context of continuous loss claims. The year also saw numerous reversals of summary judgment on coverage and bad faith issues, mostly in favor of policyholders. A notable exception to the policyholder winning streak was the almost unanimous rejection by trial courts of efforts to secure coverage for COVID-19 business interruption losses; however, those cases have not yet percolated to the Courts of Appeal, and are thus not addressed in this year’s update. In addition, several cases wrestled with civil procedure issues in the context of insurance policies, including arbitration, choice of law and forum selection. Finally, the door for insurance broker liability was cracked open in cases where the broker holds itself out as having expertise in a specialized area of insurance.

Insurer v. Insurer