food-lit-imagePerkins Coie has published its first Food Litigation Year in Review, covering key developments and trends in food litigation for calendar year 2016.  The Year in Review’s key insights include data-driven assessments of how (and where) the plaintiffs’ bar has continued its assault on the food industry in 2016. That data reflect the filing

Part III: Product Contamination and Product Recall Insurance

As the actual or threatened contamination of food and other consumable products has become more commonplace, insurance companies have developed and marketed specialized insurance policies to cover food manufacturers against the costs they incur as a result of this contamination.

In this final installment of our three-part series on insurance coverage for the various costs involved in food product recalls and contamination claims, we discuss specialized insurance policies designed to cover those costs.
Continue Reading Food Contamination Claims and Recalls: Is Your Business Covered? – Part III

Food Contamination Coverage Blog Post Part II

When tainted peanuts were discovered in a peanut butter processor’s plant, the raw peanut stock had to be destroyed and the manufacturing equipment sanitized before processing could resume. The food processor and its exclusive distributor suddenly had no peanut butter to sell, and they had lost their primary profit source. Both companies turned to the processor’s commercial property insurance to recoup the costs of their lost property and profits from the processing plant shutdown.
Continue Reading Food Contamination Claims and Recalls: Is Your Business Covered? – Part II

Part I: Commercial General Liability Insurance

Over the last few years, the number of recalls of food products for alleged contamination and undisclosed ingredients or other mislabeling issues has risen drastically. This is the first in a three-part series designed to help food product companies navigate the challenging insurance issues posed by food contamination losses and recalls under several types of insurance policies. We start by considering key insurance coverage questions under commercial general liability (CGL) policies.Continue Reading Food Contamination Claims and Recalls: Is Your Business Covered? – Part I

Insurance companies typically argue that a policyholder’s liabilities arising out of a product recall are only covered, if at all, under a specialized product recall policy, and not under more widely purchased standard-form general liability policies. A recent federal court decision has rejected these arguments, and held that a general liability policy was triggered to