Another Victory for Insurers of General Contractors

In a prior blog, we discussed what could be considered a trend (or at least a concept worth further monitoring) - courts finding insurance coverage for construction defect claims under standard Commercial General Liability (CGL) policies, even though the defects arguably did not arise from an "occurrence," typically defined in CGL policies as an "accident." In J-McDaniel Construction Co., Inc. v. Mid-Continent Casualty Co., the Eighth Circuit affirmed a CGL insurer's denial of coverage for claims related to faulty workmanship. In the case, the contractor argued that the insurer had a duty to defend because "the legal landscape is shifting and [] states are trending toward including faulty workmanship within CGL policy coverage." The Court of Appeals didn't bite. The opinion can be found at http://media.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/14/08/132673P.pdf.