A site owner was involved in an insurance coverage litigation case at a former chemical distribution facility in Montana. The core issue was whether the chlorinated solvent plume at the site had developed primarily from one large “accidental” spill (owner/plaintiff position), or only resulted from numerous small releases due to poor handling practices over 20+ years (insurer/defendant position). This is a key point in environmental insurance coverage both because of the definition of "accident" and the issue of deductible for each incident.
I helped the plaintiff team prepare expert rebuttal reports to the opposing side’s two expert reports, prepared responses to opposing experts' rebuttals to our expert report, prepared questions for our attorneys to ask the opposing experts during their depositions, and helped with the preparation of trial demonstratives. The site data indicated that there most likely had to have been at least one very large release.
