Actual Safety for Actual Property Property: Court docket Ruling Reinforces Significance of D&O Insurance coverage
In a latest shopper alert, Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP actual property lawyer Laurie Grasso and insurance coverage attorneys Geoffrey B. Fehling, Cary D. Steklof, and Evan J. Warshauer focus on the vital lesson actual property corporations and their officers and administrators can take away from the Illinois federal district courtroom’s choice in Previous Guard Insurance coverage Firm v. Riverway Property Administration, LLC et al., No. 1:23-cv-01098 (C.D. Ailing. Sep. 6, 2024). The courtroom discovered a industrial normal legal responsibility insurer had no obligation to defend or indemnify a property administration firm or its proprietor in lawsuits that included allegations of intentional conduct, holding that the allegations didn’t fall inside the insurance policies’ definition of incidence, which required “an accident.”
The choice underscores the significance of sustaining administrators and officers legal responsibility insurance coverage to guard in opposition to gaps in protection that would in any other case outcome from allegations of intentional, fraudulent, legal, or understanding conduct, probably leaving particular person insureds personally uncovered for important, ongoing authorized payments.