The Calif. Supreme Court ruled in favor of with Montrose, stating that the company "is entitled to access otherwise available coverage under any excess policy once it has exhausted directly underlying excess policies for the same policy period." (Photo: Shutterstock)
In a decision described as a major victory for policyholders, the California Supreme Court has unanimously ruled in Montrose Chem. Corp. of Cal. v. Superior Court that policyholders do not always have to first exhaust all of their primary coverage over different policy periods to access excess coverage for certain years.
|Where it all began
Montrose manufactured an insecticide, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, or DDT, at a Torrance, Calif., facility from 1947 to 1982. In 1992, the U.S. and the State of California together sued Montrose for environmental contamination allegedly caused by the operation of the Torrance facility. Montrose agreed to pay for environmental cleanup. The company paid over $100 million and asserted that its future liability could approach or exceed this amount.
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