Texas Plaintiffs Allege Chubb Concealed Asbestos Risks
Efforts by plaintiffs and their attorneys to hold insurers directly liable for injuries caused by insured companies that manufactured or used asbestos have recently targeted a Chubb Corp.-affiliated insurer in Texas.
Chubb, based in Warren, N.J., indicated in a 10-K form filed on March 11th with the Securities and Exchange Commission, that Chubb Indemnity is facing complaints in two Texas district courts. The complaints, which were served in December 2002, allege that the insurer conspired to conceal risks associated with asbestos exposure. The district courts are located in Nueces and Bexar counties.
The plaintiffs are seeking to hold Chubb Indemnity responsible for monetary and punitive damages related to the alleged concealment, and for breach of alleged duties to consumers of asbestos products and materials.
In recent years, some plaintiffs' attorneys have sued insurers for asbestos injuries, arguing that insurers were in a position to know about asbestos-related dangers from their inspection of client company facilities and operations. Such knowledge gave the insurers a duty to warn the public of these hazards, according to this legal theory.
There have also been suits based on other legal theories, but with the same goal–to recover asbestos-related damages from insurance companies. For example, there is a pending case in West Virginia against Hartford, Conn.-based Travelers Property Casualty Insurance Corp. That suit involves allegations that Travelers violated unfair claims handling laws when settling asbestos claims. The suit filed against Chubb, on the other hand, is a tort claim based on concealment of known hazards.
Chubb noted in a statement in their 10-K that the company is determined to vigorously defend itself against these charges.
Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, March 31, 2003. Copyright 2003 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved. Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.
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