TALG Intervenes into Coverage DJ and Obtains a Summary Judgment of No Coverage Under a Commercial Auto Policy
March 03, 2020
When Commercial Auto-insurer Amtrust Insurance Company of Kansas, out of the blue, received a policy limits Stowers demand in a wrongful death lawsuit being defended by the mutual insured’s CGL carrier, it turned to Bob Allen to resolve the coverage issue. Over the opposition of the CGL carrier, AmTrust intervened in the CGL carrier’s pending Declaratory Judgment action in the Eastern District of Texas. The legal question involved whether the CGL policy, the AmTrust Commercial Auto policy, or neither, covered a death by carbon monoxide asphyxiation resulting from running a gas generator in a van. AmTrust defended its coverage denial based on its policy’s Operations and Pollution Exclusions. Magistrate Judge Kimberly C. Priest Johnson heard arguments on the parties’ collective motions for summary judgment and ruled in the attached Memorandum Order that no coverage exists under the AmTrust Commercial Auto policy. Accordingly, she validated AmTrust’s coverage denial by granting its Motion for Summary Judgment.