Certain Underwriters at Lloyd’s London v. Superior Court — which most people refer to as Powerine because that is the name of the real party in interest — may be the most radical insurance coverage decision of the 1990s.
In all of the years of heated litigation over insurance coverage for environmental liabilities, no one to our knowledge — and between us we have litigated insurance cases for more than 25 years — ever dreamed that standard liability insurance policies only cover judgments in lawsuits and do not cover damages awarded in administrative agency proceedings. But that is what the Second District Court of Appeal held last month in the 2-to-1 Powerine decision.
