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NEWS DECEMBER 21, 2020 ¦ 17

Insurance Cases Tied to Pandemic Are Sent
to Pa., NY Federal Courts by MDL Panel

By Amanda Bronstad

As lawsuits proliferate across the country over
insurance claims tied to COVID-19, a fed-
eral judicial panel has ordered that lawsuits
specific to two insurers be sent to Pennsylvania and
New York.
In separate orders Tuesday, the U.S. Judicial Panel
on Multidistrict Litigation ordered coordination of
about two dozen lawsuits bringing business inter-
ruption claims against Erie Insurance to the Western
District of Pennsylvania, near its headquarters. The
order builds on prior decisions outlining the panel’s
position on whether cases against insurance claims
tied to COVID-19 should be coordinated into mul- U.S. District Judge Mark Hornak of the Western District
tidistrict litigation. of Pennsylvania. Photo: Jason Doiy

“This is the latest motion seeking centralization states—a “critical factor, as it meant the transferee
of litigation involving insurance claims for coverage judge would be tasked with a more manageable liti-
of business interruption losses caused by the COV- gation than an MDL with a potentially nationwide
ID-19 pandemic and the related government orders scope,” the panel wrote in Tuesday’s order.
suspending, or severely curtailing, operations of “At most, this litigation will expand to encompass
non-essential businesses,” wrote U.S. District Judge six additional states,” the order says. Erie also has a
Karen Caldwell of the Eastern District of Kentucky, “small number of substantially similar policies,” the
who is the panel’s chairwoman. only difference being that some have a virus exclu-
But the panel, in an unusually lengthy order, sion, while others do not.
contrasted the Erie litigation to its prior decisions The order acknowledged that plaintiffs could have
addressing lawsuits alleging insurers illegally denied different theories and facts setting their cases apart
business interruption claims tied to the COVID-19 from one another—a key argument against coordi-
pandemic. In August, the MDL panel denied a nating them before the same judge.
request to coordinate more than 260 business inter- “Were this litigation larger in geographic scope
ruption cases together in an industry-wide docket, and if it involved more state laws, this might be a
concluding the lawsuits asserted various state laws more persuasive argument because the transferee
and ensnared too many companies with different judge would be tasked with managing a much more
policies. In an unusual move, the panel gave lawyers complicated litigation,” Caldwell wrote. “As with the
in some of the cases a chance to argue whether MDLs Society litigation, what sets this litigation apart from
could exist against individual insurers, but, on Oct. others in which we have denied centralization is the
2, the panel refused coordination of separate dockets defined geographical scope of these actions, which
against Travelers, Certain Underwriters at Lloyd’s of implicates only thirteen jurisdictions.”
London, Cincinnati Insurance and The Hartford. Mark Lanier, of The Lanier Law Firm, and Adam
However, the panel granted an MDL for a fifth, Levitt, of DiCello Levitt, two of the five plaintiffs
Society Insurance, because it operated in only six
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