Leave It to the Policyholder Professionals – Do Not Try This At Home

Recently, I was asked to look at coverage for a case where the insurer had denied a duty to defend several years before. We concluded that the insurer should have been defending based on certain allegations in the complaint and asked it to reconsider. In the meantime, though, a successful partial summary judgment motion had dismissed the only covered claims. There is good law to suggest that the duty to defend should continue, but the client could have avoided an unnecessary fight had she retained coverage counsel at the outset.

In another case, the insured tendered coverage under a general liability policy and coverage was denied. The client went back and forth with the carrier over the denial, until he asked us to get involved. Given the allegations in the complaint, we asked if the client had a media liability policy that might provide coverage. This is a less common and well-known policy that fills certain gaps in a general liability policy’s “advertising injury” coverage. The client did and the carrier acknowledged a duty to defend. But a year had gone by during which the client paid substantial defense costs that could have been paid by the carrier.

Read the full blog post: Leave It to the Policyholder Professionals – Do Not Try This At Home