Insurance recovery for manufactured gas plant remediations

Lynch, Michael J.; Sylvester, John M.; Harte-Lovelace, Jane; Middleton, Andrew C.; Jones, David R.

Abstract
Former manufactured gas plant sites are expensive to remediate. Many MGP owners in the United States have paid for their remediations through insurance coverage from policies that they purchased decades ago, before certain policy exclusions became prevalent. This paper will provide basic information regarding the types of historical policies that potentially may provide coverage for MGP remediations and describe the principal steps that MGP owners may take to pursue such coverage. These steps include: (i) locating historical policies; (ii) reviewing the policies for potential coverage; (iii) determining a settlement value; (iv) providing notice of the claim to the insurers; (v) negotiating a settlement with the insurers; and (vi) filing a lawsuit against the insurers, if necessary.

Key words: deterministic cost method, first-party property policies, general liability policies, insurance, insurance archaeology, manufactured gas plants, policy exclusions, probabilistic cost

Land Contamination & Reclamation, 14 (2), 347-351 (2006) 

DOI 10.2462/09670513.736

Updated: 29-Dec-2008