Will 1st Anniversary of COVID-19 Shutdowns Spur New Wave of COVID Lawsuits?
The upcoming anniversary of COVID-19 shutdown orders may reveal whether a significant number of policyholders have been waiting on the sidelines before suing their insurers for business-interruption losses.
Holding off on legal action may make sense, as insurers are winning four out of five initial trial court rulings. Insurers are likely to be more willing to negotiate if they start losing, the thinking goes.
On the other hand, attorneys have been advising policyholders to carefully read their commercial property policies and look for notice-of-loss and suit-limitation provisions.
The first statewide COVID-19 stay-at-home order was imposed on March 19 by California. State, county and city orders followed around the nation in the ensuing few weeks.
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THE BUZZ: The siege of Congress continued to ripple through California politics on Monday, with the House gearing up for impeachment and Sacramento taking sides.
In D.C., Speaker Nancy Pelosi pressed ahead with a removal push that she said channeled the will of her members.
A New Year’s Nightmare: COVID-19 Litigation Piling Up
Illustration by Tim Peacock
More than 1,000 lawsuits across industries have been filed against insurance firms over pandemic claims as Hollywood’s largest companies take a wait and see approach on who prevails in court. Unprecedented has become a buzzword amid the pandemic, but when it comes to the financial fallout from business interruptions and the resulting landscape of lawsuits against insurance companies that are denying claims, there truly has never been a fight of this scale.
The 1970s brought a wave of business interruption suits against insurers involving asbestos contamination; in the ’80s, environmental pollution led to courtroom fights; and the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, launched a litany of legal disputes, the last of which didn’t end until 2018. Yet the legal war over COVID-related insurance claims is expected to dwarf any of those battlefields, according to those entrenched in this niche o