“Arising Out Of” Exclusions in Missouri Insurance Policies: Court Bars Coverage for Opioid Marketing Claims
In Opioid Master Disbursement Trust II a/k/a Opioid MDT II v. ACE American Insurance, et al., ED113635 (Mo. App. E.D. July 21, 2026), the Missouri Court of Appeals addressed an important coverage issue arising out of the opioid litigation wave: whether…
Drive Other Car Coverage
What the DOC Endorsement Is, Why It Exists, and Where It Fits Practice point: The Drive Other Car endorsement is not a routine fleet add-on. It is a targeted fix for a recurring coverage gap: the individual who relies on a company-furnished auto and…
Insured Contract The Enumerated Categories
The Five Specific Insured Contracts, and Why They Matter Most When the Catch-All Is Gone Parts One through Three of this series concentrated on the broad catch-all — subpart (f) of the insured contract definition — because it reaches the widest range of…
Insured Contracts: When the Carrier Gets It Wrong
Insured Contract Coverage, Excess Judgments, and Extra-Contractual Exposure The first two installments in this series were about coverage that exists. Part One located the insured contract provision in the Commercial General Liability (“CGL”), commercial…
Inside the Insured Contract
Indemnification, Assumption of Liability, and What Actually Triggers Coverage Part One introduced the insured contract provision identifying it in the three liability forms most often standing behind a commercial defendant — the Commercial General…
The Insured Contract Provision
An Overlooked Path to Coverage for Parties Who Are Neither Named Insureds Nor Additional Insureds When a plaintiff’s attorney evaluates available coverage in a serious injury or wrongful death case, the instinct is to identify the tortfeasor, locate the…
When the Carrier Breaches First: Answering Cooperation and Consent Defenses
The insured’s refusal to accept a belated defense is not non-cooperation — it is the privileged consequence of the insurer’s first material breach. Introduction A litany of denials and affirmative defenses commonly follows the filing of an insurance…
Personal Counsel for the Defended Policyholder
When coverage is intact and the insurer is defending, the insured still has interests no one in the defense triangle is positioned to protect. Introduction Much of the writing on personal or independent counsel for an insured assumes a coverage fight:…
Five Misconceptions About Missouri Insurance Law That Cost Practitioners Cases
Introduction Insurance coverage litigation in Missouri is governed by a body of statutory and common law that is, in its broad outlines, familiar to most civil practitioners. The duty to defend, the duty to indemnify, the vexatious refusal statute, the…
The Eight Corners Rule Plus in Missouri: When the Duty to Defend Arises
How Missouri courts determine whether an insurer must defend its insured — the comparison test, the three-part Allen v. Bryers standard, the low threshold for triggering the duty, and the consequences of a wrongful refusal Missouri Injury & Insurance…