Covington has a leading national practice in assisting policyholders to obtain insurance coverage for environmental liabilities. We seek the best possible recovery for our clients through litigation or negotiation, or a combination of both. Our work has resulted in favorable rulings or settlements for many clients seeking environmental coverage.
Litigation
Our victories in environmental coverage litigation have helped to shape favorable law for policyholders nationally on crucial issues, including whether response costs are treated as covered “damages,” whether groundwater contamination is outside the reach of the “owned property” exclusion, and whether the “pollution exclusion” bars coverage for liabilities a policyholder neither expected nor intended.
When appropriate, our insurance lawyers have called upon members of the firm’s nationally-renowned Environmental Practice Group to contribute their experience on CERCLA (Superfund), RCRA, SARA, and natural resource damage issues. This combination of skills and experience has produced a number of landmark court decisions and substantial recoveries.
We have handled environmental coverage litigation in the courts of Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Covington’s role as a leading policyholder advocate is also demonstrated by our organizing and drafting more than 75 amicus briefs in a nationwide briefing project in environmental coverage cases. As counsel for amici, we have participated in many of the most significant environmental coverage decisions of the past two decades, such as the Morton International, New Castle County, Montrose, and AIU cases.
Settlement
In addition to our litigation and arbitration experience, our policyholder coverage lawyers bring the full range of our considerable settlement negotiation and counseling skills to these often complex cases in order to maximize policyholder recoveries. With increasing frequency, we have found that environmental coverage disputes may be resolved without resorting to litigation. In other cases, litigation and negotiation go hand-in-hand in enabling our lawyers to obtain significant recoveries for our policyholder clients.
Representative Matters
- For Gillette, we secured favorable rulings on several issues before its environmental coverage action settled on the eve of trial.
- On behalf of the State of Minnesota, we have secured – through litigation and related settlement negotiations – more than $100 million in insurance recoveries for environmental matters pursuant to an innovative legislative program for the cleanup of landfills within the State.
- We have assisted LTV Steel in securing more than $40 million in insurance proceeds for environmental liabilities through an innovative settlement structure in LTV’s pending bankruptcy proceeding.
- From 1991 to 1997, Covington represented Exxon Corporation, as it was then named, in its hotly contested, multi-forum claims for coverage of losses arising out of the grounding of the Valdez. In early 1997, this important coverage saga ended when Exxon and a consortium of international underwriters led by Lloyd's and various Scandinavian companies settled for $780 million.
- We recovered approximately $300 million in settlements of environmental claims for a mining, smelting and refining company.
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