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Third Circuit: Excess Insurer Need Not Prove Prejudice in Order to Enforce a Claims-Made and Reported Requirement

By Jay Levin
January 03, 2006

In a 2-1 opinion, the Third Circuit recently affirmed summary judgment in favor of an excess medical malpractice insurer in a case involving both policy construction and evidentiary issues. In Lexington Insurance Company v. Western Pennsylvania Hospital, et al., 2005 WL 2174003 (3d Cir. 9/9/05), West Penn Hospital had three layers of medical malpractice coverage. The first layer was a primary policy issued by PHICO. The PHICO policy provided both general liability, on an occurrence basis, and medical malpractice coverage on a claims-made and reported basis. The next layer was $1 million worth of excess coverage provided by the Pennsylvania Medical Professional Liability Catastrophe Fund (the “CAT Fund”). Lexington issued an excess policy over those first two layers. The CAT Fund coverage was also claims-made and reported.

The Lexington policy had a pre-printed umbrella form that was occurrence-based for general liability, and had two relevant endorsements. The first, Endorsement 007, provided follow-form claims-made medical malpractice coverage. The follow-form language was as follows:

Insofar as coverage is available to the Insured in the underlying insurance set forth in the Schedule of Underlying Insurance, this policy applies to liability arising out of medical incidents. All of the terms and conditions of said underlying insurance shall apply to this insuring agreement except as otherwise expressly stated herein.

The underlying insurance identified in the Schedule of Underlying Insurance was the PHICO policy.

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