Greetings! Following this letter are links to three papers. Two of them are from The Texas Lawyer and the third
was authored in house. All three deal with pertinent Texas insurance law
issues.
The first
article, "Proving an Insurance Policy Covers a Claim," addresses two important
recent developments regarding the "trigger"
for property damage claims. Formerly, the trigger was the date when
the damage manifested itself. Recent changes in the law, however, now establish
that the trigger is when the damage actually
occurred. This is an important consideration for an Insured when
seeking to invoke the correct policy and when determining the date on which the
Statute of Limitations will run. The second article, which
is entitled "Questions Persist in Standard CGL Policies," deals with some of the
same questions as the first article. It also includes an analysis of the Texas
Supreme Court's decision regarding the application of the "contract exclusion" provision of the CGL,and the application of that exclusion to deny coverage of a claim for defense
and indemnity by an insured pursuant to a construction contract. That contract
provided for the assumption of liability - a very common provision in Texas construction
contracts.
The third paper
discusses whether the waiver of
subrogation clause of the Standard AIA 201 (1997) bars subrogation
for damages to property that was paid on the General Contractor's Commercial
General Liability policy. It appears to us that some Texas and other state
courts are holding, mistakenly in our opinion, that payments on behalf of
contractors by their CGL policies cannot be "subrogated" in the face of the
waiver clause of the A201. This has always
been true with regard to Property policies maintained for the project or for
property policies maintained by the Owner. We argue, however, that a
substantially different analysis should be considered before applying the
property insurance rule to bar subrogation under a comprehensive general
liability policy. As it is pertinent to the question, this article also includes
an analysis of coverage under a Builders Risk
policy.
We hope that these articles are
helpful. Please feel free to forward them to anyone who might be interested.
Please feel free to call us if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Peter Martin
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ARTICLES ON IMPORTANT CURRENT TEXAS INSURANCE ISSUES
By Peter Martin & Phillip Green - Martin & Martin Law
- Questions Persist In Standard GCL Policies
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