Appellate — continued from Previous Page
arbitration award might be viewed as the product of a “default” in the broad sense that Gens was not there, having elected to stand on an improbable and unsubstantiated suggestion that he lacked proper notice. But by the time the judgment was entered, there had been an intervening proceeding on H&C’s motion to confirm the award. “In that proceeding Gens had every opportunity to prevent the ripening of the arbitration award into a judgment; indeed he sought to do so, but failed to raise a colorable defense. This was his trial on the merits.” The court also affirmed the sanctions award against Gens and his counsel.
Excess insurance; insurance-
contract interpretation; insurance agent liability: Wallman v. Suddock (2011) __ Cal.App.4th __ (2d Dist., Div. 4.)
Wallman and members of his family
were partners in a real estate partner- ship that owned apartment buildings. In 1994 Anthony Rodriquez, then a child, fell from a third-floor window in a building owned by the partnership (Ingraham property.) In 1994, the Ingraham property was insured under a policy issued by Crusader Insurance.
The partnership sold the property in 2001. In 2004, the partnership asked its insurance agent, Suddock, to obtain pri- mary and excess coverage for its prop- erties. He procured primary coverage through Capital Insurance Group, which issued separate policies to the various LLCs within the partnership for the policy period of July 15, 2005, to July 15, 2006. He procured excess cov- erage through American Guarantee. The schedule of underlying insurance on the excess policy listed the primary insurer as “Capital Insurance Group” but listed the policy number as “TBD.” It listed the policy term as July 15, 2005 to July 15, 2006. The excess policy also only applied to the scheduled proper- ties owned by the partnership in 2005. Rodriquez brought suit against the
partnership in 2006. The defense was tendered to Crusader, which insured the Ingraham property in 1994, when the incident occurred. When the partner- ship learned that the Crusader policy limits were unlikely to be sufficient to resolve the Rodriquez litigation, they tendered the claim to American Guarantee, which denied coverage because the Crusader policy was not one of the underlying policies listed on the schedule of underlying coverage,
86 — The Advocate Magazine JANUARY 2012
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