Confirming the growing split of decisions among federal courts addressing COVID-19 insurance issues, two district courts in the Fifth Circuit differed in their interpretation of virus exclusions, with one denying coverage and the other permitting the policyholder’s claim to proceed.
On November 4, a Mississippi federal district court dismissed a restaurant’s complaint for business interruption
In a sweeping decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit extended the absolute pollution exclusion to the unplanned discharge of “rock fines,” pellets produced during quarry operations, and denied coverage for the cost of removing the rock fines and defending a state law claim against the insured.
The insured, Eastern Concrete Materials,
A catastrophic loss, such as a hurricane strike, can force any company out of business, even if it is insured. Although a business does not suffer any direct physical damage to its facilities, fickle natural disaster events can disrupt a company’s entire supply chain, with ripple effects for vendors, suppliers, customers and second-tier providers