PFAS in Focus: Show-Me Insights From Chris Wieberg, Missouri Department of Natural Resources - Reflections on Water Podcast
[Podcast] Catching Up on Canadian Environmental Regulation
PFAS: Increasing Regulations and Managing Legal Liability
EPA Plan Changes PFAS Outlook For Companies, Regulators
2BInformed: The Future of Fluoride in Drinking Water, the New TSCA Fees Rule, and the Drinking Water Contaminant Candidate List 5
The Great Green North: A Discussion on Canada’s Environmental Regulations
Forever Chemicals: What They are and What is being Done to Minimize Their Impact
What are PFAS and Why Should We Care?
The Colorado Court of Appeals (Division VI), applying Colorado law, partially affirmed a trial court decision dismissing an action seeking insurance coverage for COVID‑19 related losses. Spectrum Retirement Communities, LLC...more
The increasing volume of litigation involving Poly- and Perfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) presents substantial financial and operational uncertainties for the insurance sector. Due to their environmental persistence and...more
IBM recently filed a declaratory judgment action against multiple insurers seeking coverage for environmental remediation costs. The complaint contains lessons for policyholders facing long-tail environmental exposure claims....more
We have previously written on the evolving risks associated with PFAS—also known as “forever chemicals”—and their implications for policyholders navigating environmental liabilities involving both PFAS and PFAS-related...more
The insureds were sued for alleged environmental contamination from the operation of a marine terminal and chemical storage facility. The claimants alleged that hazardous materials leaked from storage tanks over a fifty-year...more
What You Need to Know in a Minute or Less - As the scientific and regulatory landscape surrounding various emerging contaminants shifts, so too do the options that companies can consider taking to minimize and insure against...more
Amid a surge of lawsuits nationwide over alleged PFAS-related harms and growing regulatory efforts to curb their production and use, policyholders are grappling with mounting liabilities and unclear insurance coverage...more
Some jurisdictions consider the ISO-form "bodily injury" definition to be ambiguous as to whether emotional distress requires physical harm to be bodily injury. Many insurers have amended bodily injury to expressly require a...more
In Wesco Insurance Co. v. Brad Ingram Construction, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a summary judgment ruling in favor of Wesco Insurance Co. after a split panel concluded that toxic dust and debris from a...more
In our January insurance update, we include three state cases addressing some less common situations. It’s not often that a pollution exclusion is interpreted in the context of an auto policy. But the South Dakota Supreme...more
Per-and polyfluoralkyl substances (PFAS)—ominously described by some as “forever chemicals” and others as the “mother of toxic torts”—are becoming common household words. As Miller Nash’s Environmental Team explained, PFAS...more
The Southern District of New York recently held that a contamination exclusion was ambiguous in the context of Covid-19-related business interruption losses. Accordingly, the court held that the issue was inappropriate to...more
This 26th edition of Unprecedented, our weekly update on COVID-19-related litigation, sees us returning to now-familiar topics involving liability protection for businesses, wrongful death lawsuits (particularly those...more
Under established Illinois law, an insurer must defend a legal action filed against its insured unless it is clear from the face of the underlying complaint that the allegations fail to state facts which bring the case...more
As the number of filings of COVID-19 coverage actions continue to increase, we thought it would be useful to review these cases for our insurer readership so they can better understand the issues and themes that are emerging...more
In recent years, Wisconsin generally has been a pro-policyholder jurisdiction when it comes to long-tail environmental coverage cases. That trend continues with a decision by a Wisconsin appellate court in a case involving...more
In Pitzer College v. Indian Harbor Insurance Company, the California Supreme Court resolved two previously open questions in insurance law: (1) it concluded that the notice-prejudice rule is a fundamental public policy of...more
Pitzer College v. Indian Harbor Insurance Company, — P.3d –, 2019 WL 4065521 (2019); California Supreme Court, Case No. S239510 (Aug. 29, 2019). On certified questions by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the California...more
On August 29, 2019, in Pitzer College v. Indian Harbor Insurance Company, 2019 Cal. LEXIS 6240, the California Supreme Court held that, in the insurance context, the common law “notice-prejudice” rule is a “fundamental public...more
The latest ruling in the long-running environmental insurance case, Olin Corporation v. Lamorak Ins. Co., was released on April 18, 2018, by Judge Rakoff of the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of New York. Judge...more
The New York Court of Appeals ruled last week that if an insurance policy provides for pro rata allocation to determine the insurance coverage responsibility for environmental contamination spanning multiple policy periods,...more
In an action seeking insurance coverage for environmental contamination, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that “all sums” allocation would apply to the policies at issue, and therefore the...more
In January 2017, the Second Circuit ruled that policyholders must actually or presumptively give their insurers notice of specific policies under which they seek coverage—mailing a notice of the claim may not be enough....more
A Georgia appellate court has ruled that there is no continuous trigger of coverage for an environmental claim when the subject policy responds to occurrences, not property damage, during the policy period. The insured sought...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: The Northern District of Indiana rejected the insurer’s assertion that its pollution exclusion clauses unambiguously included all contaminants. Indiana, unlike other jurisdictions, is pro-insured when...more