Construction Defect Disputes and Insurance Claims: Navigating Complex Multi-Party and Multi-Policy Issues

Active

Program Number

34134

Program Date

2024-08-27

CLE Credits

Construction defect claims often involve many parties and multiple layers of insurance. Insurance practitioners must understand not only the difference between different types of insurance, but how various primary insurance and excess insurance policies interact with one other.

In this program, Mr. Adelstein and Mr. Yetka will discuss priority of coverage when various different primary policies of multiple insureds are triggered in a property claim, including which insurer responds first, and how the policies are exhausted moving forward including both horizontal and vertical exhaustion models. Next the panel will discuss how multiple insurance policies issued to the same policyholder respond to a claim. Included in this analysis are how to avoid gaps in coverage, trigger of coverage issues, allocation of coverage between multiple policies with the same policyholder. Different courts have applied different models, including vertical, horizontal and pro rata allocations depending on policy limits, exhaustion, years of coverage and other factors.