Most businesses have a variety of insurance coverage that they hope never to have to utilize. If and when the time does come to exercise one’s rights to the benefit of such a policy, however, the last thing any in-house counsel wants is to be unaware of a technicality that could lead her company to forfeit those rights. Unfortunately for The Saint Consulting Group (“Saint”), that is exactly the situation in which it recently found itself.

In April of 2010, Saint purchased an insurance policy that covered “a Wrongful Act” made by “Insured Persons.”  As often is the case with insurance policies, while the actual insurer was The Hartford, Saint had purchased the policy through an agent, the Eastern Insurance Group, LLC. 

On June 23, 2010, Saint was sued on a variety of theories of liability arising out of the work that it undertook on behalf of a client. Because Saint wanted to avail itself of the benefits of its insurance policy with The Hartford, which included the cost of defending the litigation, Saint sent Eastern Insurance notice of the lawsuit and included copies of the complaint and first amended complaint at issue. While Eastern Insurance forwarded on that … Keep reading