Insurance Recovery for Environmental Liability: Occurrences, Triggers, Exclusions, and Covered Damages

Description

Environmental liabilities and related costs are a significant threat to a business's bottom line, and insurance coverage is a crucial source for recovery.

Insurance recovery to offset costs of environmental liability can be difficult, and policyholders face several hurdles. Policyholders may have to determine which policy or policies may cover defense and indemnity. The number of occurrences can have a significant impact on the total recovery.

Because most policies have limits related to occurrences, the definition of occurrence may determine how many times the insurance policy limits will apply to pay for a loss. Similarly, the number of occurrences may affect the number of deductibles applicable to a given claim.

Companies and their counsel should consider factors such as occurrences, exclusions, trigger issues, and covered damages. Counsel should prepare to counter insurers that try to allocate expenditures to the policyholder, general liability policies with another insurer, or specialized policies for environmental impairment liability, pollution legal liability, and remediation cost-cap policies.

Defense costs also can be considerable. Defense costs may be covered even if indemnity is not. What consultants and defense activities qualify as defense costs and what is and is not covered as a defense cost may make a big difference in your recovery.

Listen as our authoritative panel provides tactics for policyholders of general liability insurance policies and specialized policies to maximize recovery. The panel will examine the factors that should be considered, including exclusions and triggers, when evaluating insurance policies for recovery.