Commercial General Liability


Dykema provides comprehensive, thorough, and prompt guidance to insurers throughout the nation facing coverage issues and litigation arising from general liability policies, umbrella, and excess policies and related coverages.

We have extensive experience in evaluating and litigating all aspects of general liability coverage under Coverages A and B, including:

  • duty to defend
  • duty to indemnify
  • choice-of-law
  • fortuity and accident issues
  • number of occurrences
  • notice
  • trigger
  • allocation
  • named and additional insured questions
  • contractual indemnity
  • “other insurance” clauses
  • applicability of exclusions
  • cooperation and voluntary payment clauses
  • exhaustion
  • choice of counsel
  • deductibles and SIRs (including the effects of bankruptcy)
  • insurability of punitive damages
  • termination of the duty to defend

Our experience also extends to additional coverages including dram shop, oil and gas specialized coverages, pollution coverage (sub limits and buybacks), and employer liability coverages.

We represent insurers facing complex settlement and potential bad faith scenarios, including settlement obligations where there are insufficient limits, multiple claimants, and bad faith, or settlement demands seeking to create bad faith exposure by claimants, such as Stowers and Shamblin demands.

We also are comfortable with high SIR programs, interpleader of policy proceeds and use of out-of-the-box methods, such as creation of settlement classes to help clients resolve complex coverage issues.

In addition to issues equally applicable to primary and excess policies, Dykema advises umbrella and excess insurers on questions relating to actual exhaustion requirements, horizontal and vertical exhaustion, attachment, following form issues, dropdown questions, exclusions, and notice requirements.

We also assist in dealing with complex settlement scenarios and settlement demands seeking to create bad faith exposure, such as demands to participate in settlements with lower layers, and preservation of rights against primary insurers. Dykema’s insurance team also regularly serves as monitoring counsel for umbrella and excess insurers.

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