Monday, November 23, 2020

COVID-19 Business Interruption Analytics -- Metrics for Six Dozen Litigation Rulings (To Date)

 It was in mid-April that I got the call.  I was being drafted to a team of attorneys from over a dozen jurisdictions to defend one of my insurer clients in what was expected to be an incoming tsunami of COVID-19 business interruption lawsuits.  For a seasoned insurance coverage attorney like me, this was my most recent call-up to The Bigs.  The Show.  The reason I spent all those formative coverage attorney years parsing sentences and hunting for the elusive Oxford comma.   

Now seven months and three, fully briefed, pre-answer motions to dismiss (actually four--moved twice in one case) later, I could tell you everything you never wanted to know about the meaning of DPLOODT (direct physical loss of or damage to) property, "loss" and "damage", "of" and "to", and whether a virus is alive or dead or neither and why it might matter to a policyholder's business interruption claim.

But not in this post.  Instead, I'll skip to and share with you the "scorecard" of sorts I've developed for cataloging and tracking the 72 COVID-19 business interruption ("BI" to the cool, commercial property kids) court rulings to date:


Now, if you had been following me all along on LinkedIn, you would already have these metrics.  I've lost count how many times since April I've used the #businessinterrution and #covidBIlitigation hashtags on my LinkedIn posts (but you can count them if you want, in no particular and discernable order, by clicking here).  

I know you're wondering how I keep all these stats or metrics, right?  Easy (not really).  Thank Microsoft and the sortability (not a real word) of the excellent Excel spreadsheet.  Et voilà:


The image above clicks to its PDF source, but for the real spreadsheet geeks who know what insights custom sorting can reveal, I offer you the sortable Excel spreadsheet, itself.  All case rulings are clickable through to PDF documents residing in my Dropbox folder.  If you want updated versions of the rulings metrics and spreadsheet, follow me on LinkedIn and watch for my weekly postings.  

Please feel free to share the rulings metrics, sortable spreadsheet and Dropbox folder link with whomever might find them interesting and useful.  

And stay safe and well, everyone.  

No comments: