A restaurant's lawsuit says coronavirus losses covered, but insurance giant won't pay
The lawsuit involves IT! italy Ristorante and Bar,
"There's a sense of urgency here," said
Zack and
State and municipal edicts closed restaurants in March, thus, by the restaurant's theory, kicking in the extra coverage. The policy doesn't specifically mention "coronavirus," "COVID-19" or "pandemic."
The lawsuit argues what isn't said cuts both ways. Since 2006, the lawsuit says, there has been boiler plate insurance policy language used to exclude damages from "any virus, bacterium or other microorganism that induces or is capable of inducing physical distress, illness or disease."
That wasn't in this policy, the suit says.
"Plaintiff's policy does not contain any exclusion which would apply to allow Defendants to deny coverage for losses caused by COVID-19 and related actions of civil authorities taken in response to COVID-19," the suit argues. "Accordingly, because the policy is an all-risk policy and does not specifically exclude the losses that Plaintiff has suffered, those losses are covered."
A Chubb email to the
Greenberg used that word on the theory that ruling pandemics are covered would be a change of contract because pandemics never were meant to be implied in the contract. The other things that would cause business interruption coverage to kick in are finite, he said, while pandemic losses are the opposite.
"So the only one who could really take the infinite nature, financial nature, of that is the government," he said. "The insurance industry has
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