Q
One of our businessowners insureds recently filed a claim for valuable papers and records coverage that was subsequently denied by the insurer. The insured's business, a financial planning firm, was covered under a businessowners special form (BP 00 02 12 99) and suffered a total fire loss to both structure and contents. The limit of coverage for the building and contents has been reached.
Included among the destroyed contents were the insured's important (and expensive) reference books. We think these should be covered under the extension of coverage for valuable papers and records, but the insurer denied the claim for the reference books, stating they were not “papers.”
Is there coverage?
Illinois Subscriber
A
The businessowners policy defines “valuable papers and records” as “inscribed, printed, or written documents, manuscripts, and records, including abstracts, books, deeds…”
Since “books” are not specifically defined within the policy, the word is given its common, everyday meaning, which, according to Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (Tenth Edition) is “a set of written sheets of skin or paper or tablets… a set of written, printed, or blank sheets bound together into a volume… a long written or printed literary composition…” This definition obviously fits the destroyed property in question. The insurer seems to be focusing on a lesser used meaning of the word which refers to “a set of financial records” in order to deny the claim. But, because “books” are not specifically defined in the policy, the insured is entitled to the broadest possible meaning of the term. Your insured's reference books should be covered.
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