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With its ill-equipped natural gas systems crippled by the cold, Texas’s exports across the Rio Grande froze up and 4.7 million customers in northern Mexico went without electricity — more than in Texas itself, the Washington Post reported. The spot price of gas jumped 30-fold as far west as Southern California. And all the way up by the Canadian border, gas utilities in Minnesota that turned to the daily spot market to meet demand say they had to pay about $800 million more than planned over the course of just five days as the Texas freeze-up pinched off supplies. “The ineptness and disregard for common-sense utility regulation in Texas makes my blood boil and keeps me up at night,” Katie Sieben, chairwoman of the Minnesota Public Utility Commission, said in an interview. “It is maddening and outrageous and completely inexcusable that Texas’s lack of sound utility regulation is having this impact on the rest of the country.” The Texas market is so large — second only to California’s — and its natural gas industry is so predominant that when things go wrong there, the impacts can be felt across the country. Minnesota’s biggest gas companies are putting forward plans to recoup their expenses by adding a surcharge to customers’ bills, which the state utility commission would first have to approve. Normally, such adjustments to account for winter prices go into effect in September, but Minnesota’s biggest gas utility, Houston-based CenterPoint Energy, says the financial pinch is so great it wants to start billing customers next month — and charging them nearly 9 percent interest until the extraordinary costs are paid off.

Insurer Hartford Financial Services Group said on Friday that it had agreed to a settlement with the Boy Scouts of America and would pay $650 million for sexual abuse claims associated with policies issued mostly in the 1970s, Reuters reported. Under the agreement, the Boy Scouts and its local councils will release Hartford from any obligation under policies it issued, Hartford said. The Boy Scouts filed for chapter 11 protection last February, amid a flood of lawsuits over allegations of child sexual abuse stretching back decades. "Our agreement with Hartford is an encouraging step towards achieving a global resolution that will promote the Boy Scouts' efforts to equitably compensate survivors and continue the mission of scouting," the Boy Scouts said in an emailed statement. The payment will be in addition to contributions from national Boy Scouts local councils, participating chartered organizations and other participating insurers, it added. Apart from Hartford, insurer Chubb Ltd is also facing potentially massive liabilities stemming from the Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy.

Caesars Entertainment Inc. sued a group of insurance carriers, accusing them of declining to cover an estimated loss of more than $2 billion because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wall Street Journal reported. The casino and hotel company alleges in the lawsuit that it had purchased property insurance coverage to protect against “all risk of physical loss or damage” and resulting business interruption. Most of the policies don’t exclude loss or damage caused by a virus or pandemic, Caesars said in the lawsuit filed Friday in the Eighth Judicial District Court of Clark County, Nev. The company said that it has paid more than $25 million in premiums to secure the all-risk policy portfolio providing more than $3.4 billion in coverage limits. Caesars, which was formed as a result of Eldorado Resort Inc.’s combination with Caesars Entertainment Corp. last year, swung to a loss of $1.76 billion in 2020. The suit is the latest case of a company trying to recover lost business during the pandemic through insurance. The insurers have had the upper hand so far. Of the more than 200 rulings in suits pitting businesses against insurers, more than 80% have been in favor of insurers, according to a COVID-19 litigation-tracking effort at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.

Purdue Pharma LP and some of its creditors want a judge to rule on their contention that they have rights to as much as $3.3 billion in insurance coverage as the OxyContin maker continues working on a plan to exit chapter 11 and recover proceeds to help address the opioid epidemic, the Wall Street Journal reported. Stamford, Conn.-based Purdue last week sued over a dozen of its insurers in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, N.Y., saying its insurance policies are among its most valuable assets, but adding that it needs a judge to clarify the scope of coverage the policies provide so its advisers can formulate a plan to repay creditors. Purdue’s lawsuit lists dozens of insurance policies covering periods between 2001 and 2018. The drugmaker said its insurance companies have either disputed or declined to fully comply with their coverage obligations related to opioid-related litigation brought against Purdue. The actual amount of insurance proceeds Purdue may wind up recovering will be determined in court, and claims made in the lawsuit will likely be challenged by the insurance companies. The lawsuit names several insurance companies, among them AIG Specialty Insurance Co. and Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. Purdue filed for chapter 11 protection in September 2019, with some support for a deal with creditors including states and municipalities to resolve claims for damages due to OxyContin’s alleged role in driving a nationwide epidemic of addiction that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Members of the Sackler family who own Purdue have been sued along with the company for alleged improper marketing of OxyContin, and have offered to give up the business and contribute cash to a trust to be set up as part of a bankruptcy exit plan. Purdue pleaded guilty in November to three federal felonies, including paying illegal kickbacks and deceiving drug-enforcement officials. Members of the Sackler family have denied wrongdoing, but have agreed to contribute $3 billion to a Purdue bankruptcy plan.

Allegations of racism are often tough to prove, but especially so in homeowners’ insurance, where insurers have a lot of discretion and don’t always provide detailed explanations for why claims are denied, the New York Times reported. Since company representatives often verify claims and assess the credibility of a claimant through home visits, face-to-face interactions and other measures, there can be room for bias. While claims disputes are hardly uncommon in the industry, many Black customers say they feel treated unfairly because of their race — something that Jeff Major, a Manhattan-based public adjuster who haggles with insurance companies on behalf of policyholders over their claims, has witnessed in his line of work. “You can actually see a difference between a Caucasian family and an African-American, Hispanic or Asian family,” Major said. Insurers keep a tight lid on their policy sales and claims data. They have long argued that the size and timing of payouts, and the neighborhoods where claims are registered and addressed, are proprietary information, and that sharing that data would hurt their ability to compete. They guard it so zealously that even most regulators don’t have detailed information about how insurers assess individual claims. Michael Barry, a spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute, a trade group, said that claims data was private because payouts were considered “losses” and that revealing them would put insurers “at a competitive disadvantage to each other.” Where data is publicly available, such as auto insurance, researchers have found that policies discriminate against Black drivers by charging them higher premiums. But homeowners’ insurance has been opaque.

Chef Matthew Kelly is one of the few restaurateurs who has fought property insurers over pandemic business restrictions and won, the Wall Street Journal reported. His establishments are part of a group of restaurants that a North Carolina state court sided with this fall. The insurer has appealed the decision, which found the plaintiffs were entitled to payouts under business-interruption coverage. “I’m excited that we’ve made it this far, but that excitement and the win does not translate into relief until the job is completed,” Kelly said. Cases such as Kelly’s are keeping hope alive that some small businesses may receive insurance money to help them rebound from government-ordered shutdowns. In hundreds of lawsuits across the country, mostly small businesses have sued their property-insurance companies for refusing to pay out “business interruption” claims tied to the pandemic. Many insurers say their policies contain clear language excluding virus-related claims, while most claims also haven’t met their policies’ criteria. Many courts have backed up the insurers in their denials of payouts, but businesses are making progress. Of the roughly 100 rulings in suits pitting businesses against insurers, about three-quarters have been in favor of insurers, according to a COVID-19 litigation-tracking effort at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.