Writ Petition Denied, Successfully Confirming That Covid-19 Could Trigger Lined Bodily Injury Underneath Some Insurance coverage Insurance policies
On November 4, 2025, the Supreme Courtroom of Nevada denied a petition for a writ of mandamus filed by insurers searching for to problem denial of their partial abstract judgment movement on the problem of whether or not Covid-19 could trigger “direct bodily loss, harm or destruction” of property below an all-risk insurance coverage coverage that features affirmative protection for loss attributable to infectious illness.
In denying the insurers’ movement, the district court docket held that specific protection for infectious illness evidences a cloth distinction from insurance policies that don’t embrace such an specific protection. Underneath a narrower coverage, the Supreme Courtroom of Nevada held, together with myriad courts nationwide, that infectious illnesses don’t bodily have an effect on property in a approach that meets what insurers contend to be the brink to set off protection. See, e.g., Starr Surplus Strains Ins. Co. v. Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct. In contrast to the insurance coverage coverage in Starr Surplus, the district court docket defined that insurance policies like these offered to Bloomin’ Manufacturers evidently afford protection for infectious or contagious illness as a result of, by endorsement, they prolong that protection to cases that don’t require any “direct bodily loss, harm or destruction” of property.
The Nevada Supreme Courtroom rejected the insurers’ petition that challenged the district court docket’s choice discovering, amongst different issues, that “there doesn’t seem like a must make clear an vital challenge of regulation referring to its earlier Starr Surplus choice.” That reasoning successfully confirms the excellence between insurance policies with and with out illness protection. The ruling permits the protection lawsuit, first filed in 2020, to lastly proceed within the trial court docket.
Bloomin’ Manufacturers is represented on this litigation by Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP insurance coverage restoration accomplice Michael S. Levine and associates Andrew S. Koelz and S. Alice Weeks.