As of January 13, Southern California’s ongoing wildfires have reportedly destroyed more than 12,000 structures. Insured loss estimates exceed $25 billion, and the strong Santa Ana winds fanning the blazes are expected to continue into Wednesday.
In the aftermath of two powerful hurricanes the process of assessing the damage and rebuilding begins. Businesses suffered billions of dollars in losses during hurricanes Helene and Milton, both in physical property damage and disruption of their business (i.e., lost profits). That is precisely why businesses purchase property and other commercial insurance—to indemnify them when disaster strikes. However, it is not uncommon for businesses to be unpleasantly surprised when they present a claim to discover that their insurers are unwilling to stand behind the full insurance coverage they promised. This is particularly so in the case of a substantial loss, and even more so in the aftermath of a wide-area catastrophe—such as a hurricane or other natural disaster—because such catastrophes have negative repercussions on insurers given the number of impacted policyholders.
This article highlights eight property adjustment and coverage issues. Understanding and being thoughtful about these issues now, including working with coverage counsel as appropriate, is critical to maximizing insurance recovery.
Hurricane Helene struck Florida’s Big Bend region as a category 4 hurricane on September 25, 2024, and continued to move northeast. The storm caused widespread power outages and catastrophic damage across Florida, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Georgia and other states. It has brought life-threatening storm surges in its aftermath. Now, less than two weeks later, Hurricane Milton is making its way toward Florida’s western coast and threatens to cause additional catastrophic damage.
In the early morning of March 26, 2024, a cargo ship estimated to weigh more than 100,000 tons catastrophically struck the 1.6-mile-long Francis Scott Key Bridge while departing the Port of Baltimore. This led to fatalities and interruptions to the major maritime artery into and out of the port city. Not only did 31,000 vehicles cross this bridge each day, the now blocked Baltimore port handled 52.3 million tons of foreign cargo worth nearly $81 billion in 2023 and is responsible for more than 15,000 jobs.
Temperatures in Arizona this week reached over 110 degrees Fahrenheit. The water temperature in the Florida Keys was reported to reach sauna-like levels, threatening the life of habitat-sustaining coral. Atmospheric conditions are routinely blamed for violent storms and for wildfires that darken the skies.
As summer vacation rolls around and hotels, restaurants and other hospitality companies gear up for a busy tourist season, coastal businesses in the U.S. Southeast, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean may be welcoming an unexpected guest—the Great Atlantic Sargassum Seaweed Belt. Businesses are bracing for this ten-million-ton mass of brown seaweed, which is floating on the ocean surface and extending from the west coast of Africa to the Gulf of Mexico.
As discussed in a previous post, cyber insurance demand and premiums have significantly increased in recent years. Fitch Ratings forecasts that cyber-related premiums could balloon to $22.5 billion by 2025. Those increases presumably reflect considerable claims activity, including in connection with liabilities arising from war and state-backed cyberattacks. To manage these exposures, insurers in the cyber market are increasingly relying on changes to their policies that attempt to carve out some or all of this liability from coverage. A recent example of this trend, which may significantly alter the cyber insurance landscape, is playing out right now in the London Market.
IKEA’s Billy bookcase—so popular that one is reportedly sold every 10 seconds—recently got even cheaper, at least for Russians. IKEA is holding a fire sale as the company closes its stores and exits the Russian market. The Swedish furnituremaker’s exit from Russia is just the latest in a string of actions by over 1,000 companies—including Disney, Goldman Sachs, IBM, McDonalds and Starbucks—that are curtailing operations in the country in response to the Russia/Ukraine conflict. As of June 2022, global companies fleeing Russia have reportedly racked up more the $59 billion in losses associated with their departure. Of course, this pales in comparison to the more than 10,000 civilian casualties and $600 billion in economic losses that Ukraine has suffered since the conflict began. But even though the corporate exodus from Russia for many companies is voluntary (and has even been used by some as a positive public-relations spin), Russia has threated to confiscate Russian-based assets of companies from countries that Russia considers hostile to its interests, and U.S. and EU sanctions may practically serve to prohibit some companies from operating in Russia, all of which highlights that additional risks lie ahead.
On July 13, 2022, the California Second District Court of Appeal issued a published decision reversing a trial court’s dismissal of a policyholder’s COVID-19 coverage claim. In Marina Pacific Hotel & Suites, LLC v. Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company, the Court took two remarkable steps in the context of nationwide COVID-19 litigation. First, the Court recognized that courts must accept as true properly alleged facts when deciding a pleading challenge. Second, the Court did not merely recite the long-established rules of construction for insurance policies that apply in California and most states; rather, it followed those rules by engaging with the actual policy language.
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