COVID-19 Assisted Living Facility Nurse Catharine Best in AARP Article on Coronavirus. (Image via AARP and Catharine Best)
In Happy Valley Road LLC v. Amguard Ins. Co., No. 3:22-cv-06115-LB, 2023 WL 6200063 (N.D. Cal. Sept. 12, 2023) (Laurel Beeler, USMJ), a respected U.S. Magistrate Judge reiterated a fairly noncontroversial ruling in a way worth noting.
The ruling previously issued by the Court in this case was that there was no insurance coverage for a plaintiff LLC that owns and rents high-end properties and that alleged the loss of rental income due to the presence of COVID-19 on the insured’s premises. The Court accordingly granted the insurance carrier’s motion to dismiss. “The court relies on its previous analysis: the actual or potential presence of the COVID-19 virus is not a covered loss.15” Happy Valley, 2023 WL 6200063, at *4. The ruling is fairly noncontroversial. However, it is worth noting how the Court itself saw that previous ruling in its description of it in the Court’s own footnote 15.
The plaintiff did not allege that the property was unfit to live in but only that the coronavirus rendered its property uninhabitable. It lost the battle and the war on the motion to dismiss because “[i]t did not cite any cases to counter the weight of authority concluding that the presence of the virus does not render a property uninhabitable.” Happy Valley, 2023 WL 6200063, at *4 n.15.
Legal authority, not medical authority, decides the outcome in all these cases, including this one. The deciding authority is clear, and it is not a physician that decides, it is a judge. Perhaps a system run by judges can lead to no other outcome.
Perhaps.
Virus Exclusions and the Coronavirus Pandemic of Covid-19 are discussed in § 7:20 by Dennis J. Wall, in 1 CATASTROPHE CLAIMS / INSURANCE COVERAGE FOR NATURAL AND MAN-MADE DISASTERS (Thomson Reuters June 2023 Edition).
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