Textron Prevails in California Appellate Ruling Over Asbestos Insurance Coverage

A three-judge panel of the state Court of Appeals overturned a trial judge’s ruling that Travelers Casualty & Surety Co. has no duty to defend or indemnify Providence, Rhode Island-based Textron Inc. in the underlying action filed by Carolyn Esters.

In granting the insurer summary judgment, the lower court had concluded it was bound by a Rhode Island judge's 1991 holding that Textron’s liability policies with Travelers from 1966 through 1987 — the same ones at issue here — must be interpreted under that state’s law.

According to Law360, that distinction matters because Rhode Island and California law differ substantially on what event triggers liability coverage for progressive injuries, and Rhode Island has ruled only in the context of environmental property damage claims, not bodily injury claims such as the mesothelioma that Esters allegedly developed due to exposure to asbestos fibers from Textron’s southern California facilities. Rhode Island has applied a three part manifestation trigger. California, by contrast, applies a continuous trigger approach under which all policies in effect from a person’s first exposure to a hazardous substance through and after manifestation of a disease are triggered.

Steven E. Knott, a Pillsbury Insurance Recovery & Advisory partner who represents Textron along with Joan Cotkin in Los Angeles, said that the appellate panel "grasped all the relevant cases and their implications very thoroughly, and issued a detailed set of guidelines showing the continuous trigger of coverage applies to an asbestos bodily injury case."