That was the question (effectively) posed before the Commonwealth Court in the case of Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association Insurance Company v. Johnson Matthey, et al. In the case (which was brought in the Commonwealth Court because PA’s Department of Environmental Protection was a defendant), Pennsylvania Manufacturers sought a declaration that it did not owe coverage for an environmental contamination lawsuit filed by DEP against Johnson Mathey. In the underlying lawsuit, DEP alleged that from 1951 through to 1969, a Johnson Mathey predecessor company allowed hazardous substances (arising out of the manufacture of alloy tubes) to escape into Chester County, PA. Pennsylvania Manufacturers insured Johnson Mathey from 1969 through to 1971. The contamination was not discovered until 1980 and thus no contamination at the Site was detected during the Policy period.

Pennsylvania Manufacturers, which assumed its insured’s defense under a reservation of rights, argued that for coverage to attach, the property damage must manifest itself during the policy period. The Commonwealth Court agreed with this basic coverage principle and noted that the “trigger of coverage under an “occurrence” insurance policy is ordinarily the first manifestation of the injury that is alleged to have been caused by the insured.” If only the decision had ended there!

However, the court went on to write that under the reasoning of the J.H. France Refractories Co. v. Allstate Insurance Co., 626 A.2d 502 (Pa. 1993) decision (which expanded the trigger of coverage with respect to asbestos bodily injury claims and held that all “occurrence” policies from the date of exposure to the date of first manifestation are triggered), there was no specific reason for continuous trigger coverage to be limited to asbestos cases. The Commonwealth Court wrote that “the justification for the multiple trigger of coverage was not the peculiar nature of asbestos disease, but the long latency of the claim for which coverage was sought.” Applying this reasoning to the facts at bar, the Commonwealth Court held “On the record before us, this case therefore presents the long latency of continuing, undetected injury or damage that supports a trigger of insurance coverage prior to manifestation under the Supreme Court’s decisions in J.H. France Refractories Co. and St. John.”

So, what does this mean for the insurance marketplace? What it means is that there are now, at least, two possible scenarios in which continuous trigger exposure applies in PA – asbestos and environmental pollution. We suspect to see the plaintiff’s bar citing Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association Insurance Company v. Johnson Matthey, et al. in other contexts – and our suspicion is that the attack will start in the construction defect arena. Stay tuned for what happens next!

For more information about this post please e-mail Bob Cosgrove.