R.T. Vanderbilt Co., Inc. v. Hartford Accident & Indemnity Co.

Outcome

Excerpt

The plaintiff, which previously mined and sold industrial talc that allegedly contained asbestos, sought, inter alia, a declaratory judgment to deter- mine, inter alia, its rights and obligations under certain insurance policies issued by the defendant insurance companies as to the costs of defending and indemnifying the plaintiff in numerous civil actions brought against it for personal injuries sustained allegedly as a result of exposure to asbestos. The defendants consisted of approximately thirty insurance companies, including H Co. and C Co., primary insurers that issued certain insurance policies to the plaintiff between 1948 and 2008, when it mined and sold talc, and L Co., M Co., and P Co., secondary insurers that issued umbrella or excess coverage to the plaintiff during that same period. Prior to trial, the court issued certain scheduling orders separating the trial into four phases, the first two of which were tried to the court and focused on issues pertaining to how defense and indem- nification costs were to be allocated between the plaintiff and the defen- dants, specifically with respect to long latency claims alleging that the claimants' exposure to asbestos caused a series of injuries that devel- oped gradually over the course of years, thereby implicating multiple insurance policy periods. The court also considered, inter alia, whether certain pollution and occupational disease exclusions in some of the secondary insurance policies precluded coverage. After the first two phases of the trial were complete, the trial court issued memoranda of decision applying the time on the risk rule of contract law, which pro- vides for pro rata allocation of defense and indemnity costs for asbestos related disease claims, in order to determine how to allocate those costs among the parties. In doing so, the trial court adopted the continuous trigger theory of insurance coverage, pursuant to which every insurer that had issued a policy in effect from the date that