[Podcast] Hosted Payload Episode 5
Stoel Rives | Deeply Rooted Podcast Episode Three: Diversity in Agriculture: From its People to its Products with Elin Miller, Founder of Umpqua Nut Farms & Umpqua Vineyards
Nota Bene Episode 101: Catching up with Global Climate Regulation with Nico van Aelstyn
[WEBINAR] Update on the California Environmental Quality Act: What’s New for 2018
The 2025 wildfire season has reached above-average activity across the United States with over 26,500 wildfires within the first 5 months of the year. For P&C insurance experts, the scope and implications of these wildfires...more
Insurance has always been a critical backdrop in risk analysis. This is because when buying insurance, “an insured usually does not seek to realize a commercial advantage but, instead, seeks protection and security from...more
Understanding Contents Damage and Contamination After a Wildfire - When dealing with affected personal property (contents) after a wildfire, it is important to understand that each loss location is unique and that there is...more
How Southern California Wildfires Impact Air Quality, Smoke Damage, and Insurance Coverage - The Southern California wildfires in January 2025 are expected to be one of the costliest natural disasters in United States (US)...more
Wildfires in California are occurring with greater frequency, causing more destruction, and increasingly igniting in unexpected locations and at unforeseen times. Since the 1970s, the length of the wildfire season in western...more
In their recent Law360 guest article titled "Reconciling 2 Smoke Coverage Cases From California," the authors described a California appellate court's Feb. 7 opinion in Gharibian v. Wawanesa General Insurance Co. as an...more
The California FAIR Plan (the FAIR Plan) was created to provide insurance for high-risk properties that are difficult to insure through private carriers. It is a private association made up of property and casualty insurers,...more
Kennedys partners Jared Greisman, Aaron Konstam, Louis Kozloff and Colin Willmott will be presenting a webinar on understanding business income claims on May 1, 2025. The webinar will survey key contours of business income...more
Last week, 10 California homeowners filed suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court against the California FAIR Plan Association (CFPA) and several of its largest insurance company members. Plaintiffs allege defendants...more
The Buchalter LA Wildfire Taskforce is happy to report some good news for certain commercial property owners impacted by the LA Wildfires. On March 28, 2025, the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) agreed...more
In Gharibian et al., v. Wawanesa General Insurance Company, the California Second District Court of Appeal found that, under California law, the insureds failed to prove smoke, soot, ash and fire debris on covered property...more
The Los Angeles area fires that started in early January have destroyed thousands of homes and businesses throughout the region. The fires triggered ongoing evacuation orders and warnings as communities coped with dangerous...more
In this month’s update, we discuss cases involving related wrongful acts, wildfires, concealment of a weapon, concealment of climate risks, and road rage. We begin in Delaware, where the state’s high court determines...more
Join Kennedys partners Forrest Booth and Neil Mody for an insightful webinar which will explore the complexities of handling first-party property insurance claims arising from California's devastating wildfires. Moderated...more
Commercial leases are full of provisions that can each have a significant impact on a tenant’s business operations. When negotiating, it may be tempting to focus more on provisions that seem the most critical, and less on...more
The recent fires in California had a devastating impact on various communities, with many homeowners losing or facing severe damage to their properties. As residents begin the challenging process of recovery, understanding...more
Welcome to the latest issue of Insurance Insights, a gathering of notable legal developments and trends relevant to the insurance industry. In this issue, fires alter the landscape of California insurance, an expert’s...more
To say that California has been hard-hit by wildfires would be a gross understatement. California, the most populous U.S. state and the third largest by area and home to iconic landmarks, such as the Golden Gate Bridge,...more
The California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, just released an opinion in Gharibian v. Wawanesa General Insurance Co. addressing insurance bad-faith claims arising out of the California wildfires in 2019. ...more
Coming on the heels of what are projected to be the costliest wildfires in California history, a new decision from the California Second District Court of Appeals could make it more difficult to obtain insurance coverage for...more
As a Los Angeles-based firm, we are deeply saddened by the devastation caused by the recent wildfires. We remain committed to supporting our clients and friends during this time and are hopeful that the general steps related...more
The Second Appellate District of the California Court of Appeal recently affirmed a lower court ruling that wildfire debris on an insured’s property did not qualify as “direct physical loss” within the meaning of a homeowners...more
On January 27, 2025, California state senators introduced Senate Bill 222 as part of the Affordable Insurance and Climate Recovery Act, aimed to improve insurance affordability in the state. The Bill, if signed into law,...more
Captive insurers can offer enhanced control over coverage, claims, and premiums; however, they also face specific challenges when dealing with large-scale coverage events that have highly uncertain scopes, particularly when...more
The Southern California wildfire crisis struck just when the Department of Insurance’s “Sustainable Insurance Strategy” was set to go into effect. Only days prior to the fires breaking out, the DOI announced the final step in...more