Walt Disney Co. is facing a lawsuit from an insurance company that claims the policies did not cover certain delays of film and TV productions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last week, Fireman's Fund Insurance Co. filed a complaint in Los Angeles County Superior Court asking the court to rule in the dispute over the claims. Included in the claims is $10 million in insurance coverage for delays that came after productions were permitted to begin again.
Fireman's Fund contends that to the extent that Disney incurred extra expenses as a result of covered, otherwise healthy, cast and crew members, being required to quarantine due to exposure to others who had tested positive for COVID-19, there is no coverage under a policy called Cast Coverage.
Disney argued that coverage is available for Second Wave Claims under the Civil Authority Coverage in the policy. Fireman's Fund disputes that and argues that the Civil Authority Coverage is not triggered by orders of civil authorities requiring things like testing or quarantining, but only by orders revoking permission to use or prohibiting access to facilities used in an insured production.
Fireman's then argues that Imminent Peril coverage is no longer applicable because the peril, the pandemic, is no longer imminent as it arrived in 2020. Fireman's Fund then contended that "if the peril is not the pandemic itself but is, instead, the imminent risk of infection that the Imminent Peril Coverage was not intended to apply where a producer i.e. TWDC (the Walt Disney Company) intentionally puts the cast and crew in harm's way by continuing production in the face of a peril that must, by definition, be imminent and of such probability and severity that it would be unreasonable or unconscionable to ignore."
Editor's Note: This is the latest suit in a major amount of litigation stemming from pandemic-related insurance claims in entertainment and other industries.