Metropolitan Life Insurance Company v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Company
Supreme Court of Connecticut
765 A.2d 891 (2001)
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (plaintiff) insured employee health plans for asbestos manufacturers and, decades earlier, had conducted research on asbestos through its medical director. Starting in 1970, Metropolitan was sued repeatedly by people alleging it failed to warn them about asbestos risks, and it spent hundreds of millions of dollars defending those suits. Metropolitan had primary, umbrella, and excess liability insurance, including excess policies from Travelers and other insurers (defendants) that only kicked in once the primary and umbrella coverage — capped at $25 million per 'occurrence' — was exhausted. The policies grouped damages from continuous or repeated exposure to the same general conditions into a single occurrence, but did not define the term. The trial court held that Metropolitan's failure to warn was not itself an occurrence, and that each claimant's separate asbestos exposure counted as its own occurrence. Metropolitan appealed.
Whether an insured party's alleged initial failure to warn about the health risks of asbestos creates a single occurrence for purposes of a continuous-exposure clause in a liability insurance policy.