The ISO Virus endorsement and circular is known to all. Those are public information. What about the internal ISO documents? Do they explain why the ISO wrote a virus exclusion? Do they help shed light on the true intention of the commercial policies before such an endorsement?
ISO documents have been produced with confidentiality provisions, but a case in Connecticut has resulted in many previously “confidential” documents coming to light that everyone involved in the COVID litigation should read and study.
For example, Tom Gibboney was an ISO employee who worked on the Biological Contamination exclusion in 2005. This contamination exclusion project was later discarded by the ISO and replaced by the Virus Exclusion Endorsement project.
If the ISO and the insurance industry were so clear that the commercial policy already would not cover for losses caused by a coronavirus pandemic, why would Gibboney write:
Do we want to exclude contamination from anthrax and SARS-type losses (vandalism/terrorism)?
On the following page, Gibboney wrote:
I think an insured would have a reasonable expectation of coverage if ordered to cease business by a government authority.
This is what we have been arguing before courts. It is strange that insurance company lawyers say this reading is unreasonable when an ISO expert agrees with me. But that is why they want these internal documents secret and say they are not relevant.
While there will be more on this topic in the near future, getting the word out about these documents is important. Policyholder attorneys with COVID business income cases should go to the link in the Hartford v. Moda LLC files and docket, which can be found here.
Thought For The Day
Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
—Benjamin Franklin