Insurance Coverage

Our firm offers a wealth of knowledge and experience with insurance coverage issues. The firm has represented insurers since the firm's inception. Insurers have engaged the firm to provide opinion letters or assist them with declaratory judgment actions. Each of our partners and several of our associates personally have handled numerous insurance coverage matters.
Some examples of insurance coverage questions for which we have been retained include:

• Whether pig waste constituted a pollutant under the pollution exclusion;
• Whether faulty workmanship claims against a contractor of a large industrial building constituted work product;
• Whether sexual harassment and tort claims against an employer were covered under a CGL type policy as an occurrence;
• Whether an employee's claims against his employer triggered personal injury liability coverage;
• Whether the household exclusion of an insured's automobile policy and umbrella policy excluded or limited coverage for an insured's personal injury claim;
• Whether a release and settlement in favor of a named insured for the policy
  limits extinguished the duty to defend as to an additional insured.

We have built a database of our opinion letters and legal memoranda. The database allows us access to our confidential work product spanning several years and potentially saves time and expense by avoiding duplication of research for certain aspects of insurance coverage issues. Our in-house library is uniquely suited to serving insurers as we have annotated form policies and other resources to enable a prompt response to coverage questions. In addition to the usual on-line services, we have easy access to the St. Louis County Law Library which is across the street from our offices. Our firm also maintains a membership at the Washington University Law School Library which is five minutes from our office. Our membership allows us access to the vast resources of the Washington University Law Library complex.

One of the potential risks that our insurance clients are particularly sensitive about is extra contractual liability, including bad faith. We are often asked to consult on third party claims being defended by other law firms where there is potential excess exposure or other concerns about how the claim was handled at the claim or suit phase. There has been relatively little litigation at either the trial or appellate level in Missouri or Illinois involving bad faith cases thanks in part to the preventative efforts of carriers and defense counsel.

We have also seen new areas of litigation come to the forefront in recent years as technology continues to advance and carriers are willing to underwrite new risks. Potential risks and liabilities heretofore unknown have been created and have raised a myriad of insurance coverage questions when applying traditional property and casualty policy provisions to e-commerce.