COVID Coverage Questions Linger As Challenges Wind Down

Colin Watson’s commentary was included in a Law360 article discussing setbacks to efforts to recover insurance payouts for COVD-19 pandemic losses and the winding down of major litigation over key coverage issues that could have lasting effects.

"Even though there's still claims out there, there is a sense for a lot of folks that we've kind of answered the questions — or courts have answered the questions for us — and it's time to move beyond COVID," Colin observed. He also said that insurers have largely paid out claims under policies that offer communicable disease coverage, which generally provides coverage for business interruption from and expenses for a disease, like cleanup costs.

Colin added that while most of these policies are sublimited, some have no aggregate sublimit; if a policyholder owns multiple properties or has multiple occurrences, "there are real dollars at stake, which makes it hard for the insurance company to pay the claim or come to a resolution."

Discussing how the insurance industry is responding, Colin shared his view  that the industry is “going to feel like they got a lot out of their effort to quickly, on the pleadings, get resolution of these cases and to do it around the country, and create that wave of anti-coverage momentum.