HNRK Coverage Corner

In this edition of Hoguet Newman’s Coverage Corner Blog, we look at a recent case from New York’s Appellate Division that considered a situation where an insured settled litigation with plaintiffs by assigning them its right to sue its insurers—and, specifically, whether the insured was “released” by the settlement such that any indemnification obligation was extinguished.   The case, Geiger v Hudson Excess Insurance Co., also considered whether an establishment serving food and drinks misrepresented the true nature of its business when it applied for insurance. 

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On August 12, 2025, a divided Delaware Supreme Court held, in a 3–2 split, that the payment of defense costs by the Named Insured’s corporate parent do not satisfy a CGL policy’s self-insured retention (“SIR”) unless the parent is specifically listed as a Named Insured or the policy language otherwise allows it.  In In re Aearo Technologies LLC Insurance Appeals, C.A. No. N23C-06-255 (Del. Aug. 12, 2025), the court found that the SIR was a condition to precedent to coverage and adopted a strict reading of the policy language that the insured argued elevated form over substance.   

HNRK insurance recovery partner Brad Nash spoke to Law360 to discuss the Tenth Circuit’s recent decision in Chisholm’s-Village Plaza LLC v. Cincinnati Insurance Co. Reversing the district court, the decision held that an insurance policy’s absolute pollution exclusions precluded defense coverage in an environmental contamination case. Brad explained, “the district court had it right that the fundamental principle that is the starting point for all of this is that you have to construe exclusions narrowly,” adding “what happens over time, and it certainly ...

In a guest article for the ABA Journal, partner Brad Nash and associate Milan Sova examine the complex and evolving law surrounding occurrence analysis in CGL claims for wildfire-related liabilities. The article outlines the three primary legal standards for determine the number of occurrences—the “cause,” “effects,” and “unfortunate event” tests—and analyzes their application to insurance coverage for wildfire liability claims. Read the full article here.

In an article for Chambers’ 2025 Insurance and Reinsurance Global Practice Guide, insurance recovery partners Brad Nash and Dorothea Regal discuss some of the high-stakes insurance coverage disputes that came out of New York last year, and the resulting insurance litigation trends the industry should have an eye on, including:

• State and federal decisions providing guidance as to when insureds may assert extracontractual claims (such as a common law claim for breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing or statutory claims for deceptive business practices ...