BarbriSFCourseDetails

Course Details

This CLE webinar will discuss why locating and evaluating coverage under old insurance policies has become a strategic imperative and the evidentiary requirements for proving or denying coverage when the terms of an insurance policy are missing.

Faculty

Description

Long-tail claims for continuous or repeated injury may be covered under policies even if the express coverage periods have expired because of new theories of liability and the trend towards reviving dormant claims or redefining the discovery rule, such as for childhood sexual abuse.

Decades-old policies go missing because policyholders and insurers have ceased to exist, downsized, merged, relocated, or even experienced physical catastrophes.

Counsel for either the insured or insurer must understand what type of evidence is sufficient to prove or deny coverage, as well as the burdens of proof and which party has them.

Listen as this experienced panel discusses how to locate and evaluate coverage under old insurance policies.

Outline

  1. Proving coverage
    1. Duty to defend
    2. Duty to indemnify
  2. Burdens of proof
  3. Locating the evidence
  4. Types of evidence
    1. Secondary evidence
    2. Documentary evidence
    3. Testimonial evidence
    4. Expert testimony
  5. Strategies for policyholders
  6. Working with insurers

Benefits

The panel will review these and other crucial issues:

  • Who has the burden of proof to establish or deny coverage?
  • When should third-party policy location services be used?
  • What happens when there is competing evidence about the scope of coverage in lost policies?
  • Do special rules apply when dealing with lost excess policies?
  • Can bad faith claims arise from reconstructing policies?