In the midst of the devastating and ongoing Los Angeles wildfires, on January 9, 2025, Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara issued the 2025 Annual Notice on behalf of the California Department of Insurance (DOI). The 2025 Annual Notice highlights what Commissioner Lara describes as “the most significant California laws pertaining to property insurance policies, including those
Earlier this year, in Gregory v. Safeco Insurance Co., the Supreme Court of Colorado addressed the question whether, under Colorado law, the notice-prejudice rule should apply to first-party property insurance claims under occurrence-based, homeowners’ insurance policies. 545 P.3d 942 (Colo. 2024). In a thoughtful and lengthy opinion, the Supreme Court adopted the rule by
I recently wrote about lessons that could be learned from the ongoing insurance coverage jurisprudence related to the coronavirus / Covid-19 pandemic. That article discussed broad trends that had developed and cohered across this vast litigation landscape, through multiple decisions in many courts over the course of several months or more. Although descriptive, most of those trends have been and are anti-plaintiff, anti-policyholder, and anti-insurance recovery.
Is a pro-policyholder trend on the horizon?
This piece is different in two important respects. First, it focuses on a point that has not yet achieved a level of pervasiveness that could be fairly characterized as a trend, although it should and hopefully will reach that point soon. Second, this piece discusses a positive outcome for policyholders seeking to recover for their coronavirus- and Covid-19-related losses.Continue Reading Policyholders seeking coverage for Covid-19-related losses may have reason to be optimistic