Amy Gore—Senior Attorney, National Legal Research Group
During this pandemic, many business owners believed that valuable coverage they had purchased for the businesses would provide a source of some financial security. Prudent business entities purchased business interruption coverage to "indemnify the insured against losses arising from the inability to continue the normal operation and functions of the business, industry, or other commercial establishment insured." Annotation, William H. Danne Jr., Business Interruption Insurance, 37 A.L.R. 5th 41 (1996 & Westlaw 2020). A typical event that has triggered this kind of coverage would be a fire or a hurricane, or some other natural disaster that caused damage to the business premises and closure of the business.
Today, more and more businesses have discovered that the claim to recover this valuable coverage is being denied by insurers. The need by the insurance industry to stop an anticipated onslaught of claims arising out of the pandemic is evidenced by the fact that "[i]n mid-March 2020, in response to inquiries from members of the United States House of Representatives, the CEOs of four leading insurance industry trade organization[s] jointly signed a letter stating, 'Business interruption policies do not, and were not designed to, provide coverage against communicable diseases such as COVID-19.'"
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