HNRK Coverage Corner

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 ...

In the early days of the pandemic, we published a Guide to Insurance Coverage for Business Losses Arising from the Covid-19 Pandemic <https://www.hnrklaw.com/HNRK-Coverage-Corner-Blog/coronavirus-and-business-interruption-claims-a-guide-to-insurance-coverage-for-business-losses-arising-from-the-covid-19-pandemic>, which was subsequently reprinted in the Summer 2020 edition of NYLitigator magazine. 

That article discussed business interruption coverage for businesses that were shuttered by government orders seeking to slow the spread of the Covid-19 virus.  Under standard policy language, such coverage is triggered by an underlying “physical loss of or damage to” the insured’s property.  We noted in our article that “[i]nsurers have already begun ...