Businesses suing insurers for billions in losses from COVID-19 shutdowns are entering a new phase: jury trials, the Wall Street Journal reported. Over the past year, judges have ruled in favor of insurers in hundreds of cases, backing up the carriers’ rejections of “business interruption” insurance claims. Many of those rulings have involved policies with virus-specific exclusions, which can make the cases more open-and-shut for judges. But last month, a jury in federal court in Kansas City, Mo., heard a restaurateur duke it out with a unit of Cincinnati Financial Corp. in a case without the virus-specific exclusion. It was the first coverage dispute, out of more than 1,800 COVID-19 lawsuits filed so far, to reach jurors, according to a COVID-19 litigation-tracking effort at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. While Cincinnati Financial still won, the trial signals that policyholders may be entering a new phase, in which their cases survive early motions to dismiss and get a fuller hearing than they have generally gotten so far. The plaintiffs in this new wave are expected to feature some large companies and organizations, such as Major League Baseball, a far cry from the local restaurants and other small businesses that so far have dominated action. And these big clients in many instances are represented by law firms with deep experience in insurance-coverage disputes, potentially setting the stage for some dragged-out, high-stakes legal fights. Large companies often have tailored policies, which don’t always have the boilerplate virus-specific exclusion that is common in policies sold to smaller businesses, said Tom Baker, a Penn law-school professor who runs the litigation-tracking project.
