Homeowners’ cracking concrete insurance claims fail in Connecticut. Again.
Yet another Connecticut court has ruled that insurance policies did not cover homeowners’ cracking concrete claims.
Yet another Connecticut court has ruled that insurance policies did not cover homeowners’ cracking concrete claims.
Basement walls developed cracks
Frank and Cynthia Huschle purchased their home in Tolland, Connecticut, in 1998, the year it was built.
In January 2017, the Huschles said, they noticed that the basement walls of their home had a series of horizontal and vertical cracks throughout.
They investigated the “pattern cracking” condition and determined that, because of defective concrete, it was “only a question of time” until their basement walls would fall in from exterior soil pressure.
They alleged that although the process of decay occurred over the course of years, it might cause “sudden events throughout the course of decay,” such as events where the walls bulged and shifted in some increment or pieces of concrete became dislodged and fell to the floor.
Sued home’s insurers
The Huschles sued their home’s insurers, Allstate Insurance Company and Teachers Insurance Company, alleging that they failed to pay for damage to their home’s basement walls caused by cracking and deteriorating concrete. The Huschles alleged that this constituted a breach of the policies and also that Teachers violated the Connecticut Unfair Insurance Practices Act (“CUIPA”) and the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act (“CUTPA”).
Allstate and Teachers moved to dismiss.
District court dismissed homeowners’ claims
The district court granted the insurers’ motions.
In its decision, the district court first dismissed the Huschles’ claims that Allstate had improperly denied their claim for basement cracking.
The district court disagreed with the Huschles’ contention that the Allstate policy could reasonably be interpreted to apply to the cracking in their home. The district court noted that the Allstate policy covered some collapses, that the term “collapse” was not defined in the policy, and that the term “collapse” could include any substantial impairment to a building’s structural integrity.
However, the district court pointed out, the Allstate policy limited itself to only cover “sudden and accidental” collapses. The Huschles’ allegations — about a “process of oxidization” in their foundation’s concrete that began when the concrete aggregate was mixed in the 1990s, and a subsequent “process of decay” that “occurs over the course of years” — was not “a temporally abrupt event,” according to the district court.
The loss, the district court said, “must be sudden and accidental” and the Huschles had not alleged that such a sudden collapse had yet occurred.
The district court then dismissed the Huschles’ claims against Teachers.
The district court explained that an all-risk policy from Teachers excluded losses “caused by . . . cracking” or losses “which result[] from” defective construction materials, and declared that a crumbling foundation was not covered because of the cracking exclusion.
Policy excluded use of defective concrete
It added that even assuming that the cracking exclusion did not apply, there still was no coverage because the Huschles alleged that those cracks resulted from the use of defective concrete — which the policy also excluded.
The district court next ruled that there was no coverage of the Huschles’ claim under another Teachers’ policy, which defined collapse to be an “abrupt” occurrence. The district court found that the word “abrupt” contemplated a “temporally distinct and sudden change in a building’s condition,” which the Huschles had not alleged.
Finally, the district court rejected the Huschles’ CUIPA and CUTPA claims against Teachers, concluding that they could not stand because Teachers had properly denied the Huschles’ claim.
The case is Huschle v. Allstate Ins. Co., No. 3:18-cv-00248 (JAM) (D. Conn. March 29, 2019).
Steven A. Meyerowitz, Esq., is director of the Insurance Coverage Law Center (formerly FC&S Legal). He can be reached at smeyerowitz@meyerowitzcommunications.com.
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