Law Commons^™

Shirking The Duty To Defend In Florida: Is Assignment The Exception To Argonaut?, Matthew J. Jowanna

Matthew J. Jowanna

A lawsuit is filed by a plaintiff and the defendant is served. The defendant has a drawer full of liability insurance policies and, therefore, the insured defendant sends a copy of the served complaint to any and all insurance carriers that may provide coverage for the claim. The insured defendant then receives a few coverage denials for reasons such as the event at issue did not occur within a certain policy period or that the insured’s private automobile policy does not provide coverage for a commercial general liability claim. In any event, the denials appear to be valid -so the …

Construction Defects: Are They “Occurrences”?, Chris French

Christopher C. French

An issue in the area of insurance law that has been litigated frequently in recent years is whether construction defects are “occurrences” under Commercial General Liability (“CGL”) insurance policies. The courts have been divided in deciding the issue and in their approaches to analyzing the issue. This article addresses how the issue should be analyzed and concludes that construction defects are “occurrences”.

The relevant rules of insurance policy interpretation dictate that construction defects are “occurrences”. Policy language should be interpreted in such a way as to fulfill the reasonable expectations of the policyholder when the policy is construed as a …