Last year I wrote a blogpost about the large class action lawsuit in Connecticut centered on the crumbling foundations due to pyrrhotite in the concrete poured by the J.J. Mottes Company in approximately 20,000 buildings across Connecticut.

Recently, a federal judge has asked the Connecticut Supreme Court for a better definition of the word collapse,1 that was given in Beach v. Middlesex Mutual Assurance Co., 205 Conn. 246 (1987). In Beach, the Connecticut Supreme Court determined that collapse was not limited to a sudden and catastrophic nature, but, included substantial impairment of structural integrity of a building.

Many of the insureds’ lawsuits brought against insurance carriers due to the structural integrity of the concrete used the Beach definition of collapse in their defense. The trial court noted that although highly instructive, the Beach decision provides insufficient guidance and no appellate decision has squarely applied Beach and arrived at a definition of “substantial impairment of structural integrity.”

Three questions were presented for certification:

  1. Is “substantial impairment of structural integrity” the applicable standard for “collapse” under the provision at issue?
  2. If the answer to question one is yes, then what constitutes “substantial impairment of structural integrity” for purposes of applying the “collapse” provision of this homeowners’ insurance policy.
  3. Under Connecticut law, do the terms “foundation” and/or “retaining wall” in a homeowner insurance policy unambiguously include basement walls? If not, and if those terms are ambiguous, should extrinsic evidence as to the meaning of “foundation” and/or “retaining wall” be considered?

The Connecticut Supreme Court chose to certify only the second question, noting that if the term collapse is not defined, then Beach is the applicable standard. With respect to the third question, Connecticut courts have “consistently rejected” insurers’ arguments concerning the term foundation, having “determined that those policy terms were ambiguous,” and have “construed them against” the insurers.2

Stay tuned for updates.

I leave you with a relevant quote from former country music singer David Allan Coe:

“It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; it’s the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.”
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1 Karas v. Liberty Insurance Corp., No. 13-1836 (D. Conn. April 30, 2018).
2 Jang v. Liberty Mut. Fire Ins. Co., 2018 WL 1505574, at *3 (D. Conn. Mar. 27, 2018); see also, e.g., Gabriel v. Liberty Mut. Fire Ins. Co., 2017 WL 6731713, at *2 (D. Conn. Dec. 29, 2017) (noting prior determination “that the terms ‘foundation’ and ‘retaining wall,’ as used in the policy, were ambiguous.”); Belz v. Peerless Ins. Co., 46 F. Supp. 3d 157, 164 (D. Conn. 2014); Karas v. Liberty Ins. Corp., 33 F. Supp. 3d 110, 115 (D. Conn. 2014) (“Each party thus has a reasonable but different interpretation of the phrases [‘foundation’ and ‘retaining wall’] supported by dictionaries and case law, so the phrases are ambiguous, and the insurance policy should be construed against Liberty Mutual.”); Bacewicz v. NGM Ins. Co., 2010 WL 3023882, at *4 (D. Conn. Aug. 2, 2010) (“[A] reasonab[e] jury could find that the basement walls of the Bacewiczes’ house did not constitute the ‘foundation’ of the house.”)