General Electric Co. v. Lines

24 Mass. L. Rptr. 319
CourtMassachusetts Superior Court
DecidedJuly 14, 2008
DocketNo. 063106BLS1
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 24 Mass. L. Rptr. 319 (General Electric Co. v. Lines) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Massachusetts Superior Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
General Electric Co. v. Lines, 24 Mass. L. Rptr. 319 (Mass. Ct. App. 2008).

Opinion

Gants, Ralph D., J.

The plaintiff General Electric Company (“GE”) filed this action in July 2006 against the Joint Liquidators of Electric Mutual Liability Insurance Company, Ltd. (“EMLICO”) seeking a declaration from this Court that the Joint Liquidators have a duty to defend and indemnify GE under the various [320]*320comprehensive general liability insurance policies issued by EMLICO to GE between 1959 and 1967 for more than a hundred different environmental claims. EMLICO was a Massachusetts mutual insurer, controlled and primarily owned by GE, created to service the insurance needs of GE. In 1995, EMLICO transferred its corporate presence from Massachusetts to Bermuda and, shortly thereafter, declared itself insolvent. The intervenor-defendant OneBeacon America Insurance Company (“OneBeacon”), formerly known as Commercial Union Insurance Company, was a reinsurer of the EMLICO policies under which GE seeks coverage, and is entitled under its reinsurance agreements to interpose defenses to coverage on EMLICO’s behalf. For all practical purposes, given the enormous amount of money sought by GE to reimburse it for the costs expended on these many environmental claims and the limited amount of money available to the Joint Liquidators, OneBeacon is the primary defendant in this litigation, since only OneB-eacon has pockets deep enough to pay these claims.

During the period in question, as noted, EMLICO was a Massachusetts mutual insurer, headquartered in Massachusetts, while GE was a New York corporation, headquartered in New York. The insurance policies between GE and EMLICO were silent as to which state’s law should govern any disputes between GE and EMLICO. GE contends that Massachusetts law should govern; OneBeacon contends that New York law should. The choice of law has more than intellectual interest, since Massachusetts and New York differ in at least two ways that may be of considerable importance in adjudicating this coverage dispute. First, under Massachusetts law, if the policyholder provides late notice of a claim, the insurer, in order to prevail on a defense of late notice, must prove both that the tardy notice was in breach of the notice provision of the policy and that the breach resulted in actual prejudice. Johnson Controls, Inc. v. Bowes, 381 Mass. 278, 282 (1980); Darcy v. Hartford Ins. Co., 407 Mass. 481, 485 (1990). Under New York law, the insurer may prevail on its defense of late notice simply by proving that the tardy notice was in breach of the notice provision of the policy; it need not also prove actual prejudice. In re Brandon & Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co., 97 N.Y.2d 491, 496 n.3 (N.Y. 2002).

Second, under Massachusetts law, if a policyholder proves that he is covered for a loss under one of multiple insurance policies issued over many years, the policyholder may obtain coverage from that single insurer for the full amount of the claim, subject only to policy limits. Rubenstein v. Royal Ins. Co., 44 Mass.App.Ct. 842 (1998). In contrast, under New York law, in what is known as the “pro rata” approach, the policyholder can obtain only that insurer’s pro rata share of the liability, determined on the basis of the amount of time the insurer was on the risk. Consolidated Edison Co. of New York, Inc. v. Allstate Ins. Co., 98 N.Y.2d 208 (2002). Therefore, in Consolidated Edison, where the costs of remediation of the environmental problem were paid over a fifty-year period, the policyholder’s recovery against an insurer who provided coverage for only one of those fifty years was limited to two percent of the total remediation costs. Id. at 216-17. In effect, in New York, the policyholder bears the risk of insolvency or gaps in coverage; in Massachusetts, the insurer bears those risks.

GE and OneBeacon have cross claimed for partial summary judgment, essentially asking this Court to resolve the choice of law that may be determinative of these two legal issues. After hearing, for the reasons detailed below, this Court finds that New York law governs the resolution of these issues.

DISCUSSION

In resolving a dispute regarding choice of law, this Court must use “the conflict-of-laws rules of Massachusetts, the forum State, in order to determine which State’s law is applicable.” Clarendon National Insurance Company v. Arbella Mutual Insurance Company, 60 Mass.App.Ct. 492, 495 (2004). In making that determination, the Appeals Court provides the following guidance:

Massachusetts has adopted a functional choice-of-law approach. Bushkin Assocs., Inc. v. Raytheon Co., 393 Mass. 622, 631 (1985) (“[We] seek instead a functional choice-of-law approach that responds to the interests of the parties, the States involved, and the interstate system as a whole”). The Massachusetts functional approach is explicitly guided by the Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws (1971). Bushkin Assocs., Inc. v. Raytheon Co., 393 Mass. at 632. Cosme v. Whitin Mach Works, Inc., 417 Mass. 643, 646 (1994). Kahn v. Royal Ins. Co., 429 Mass. 572, 576 (1999).
Three sections of the Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws (1971) are relevant to our analysis: section 193, which sets forth choice of law principles applicable to disputes concerning insurance contracts; section 188, which sets forth principles pertinent to disputes involving questions of contract; and section 6, which is a general statement of principles underlying all rules regarding choice of law. The Restatement is structured such that, when faced, as here, with a conflict of laws question involving insurance contracts, the first step is to ascertain whether the provisions of §193 will resolve the matter; if not, the next step is to employ the principles set forth in §188 to ascertain which State has a more significant relationship to the issues, using in that analysis the factors set forth in §6.

Clarendon National Insurance Company, 60 Mass.App.Ct. at 495-96.

Applying the steps of that analysis, this Court first looks to section 193 of the Restatement, which governs choice of law issues involving liability insurance contracts. “Section 193 provides that the rights created by a contract of casualty insurance are to be determined by the local law of the State that the parties to [321]*321the insurance contract understood would be the principal location of the insured risk during the term of the policy, unless some other State has a more significant relationship under the principles of §6.” Id. at 496. “The location of the insured risk will be given greater weight than any other single contact in determining the state of the applicable law provided that the risk can be located, at least principally, in a single state.” Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws §193, comment b. The insured risks during the many years that GE was insured by EMLICO were nationwide in scope, since all of GE’s national operations were insured through EMLICO. No single state can be said to be the “primary location of the insured risk" since no state held more than 20 percent of GE’s operations. However, if one had to choose the primary location of GE during the period in question, one would surely choose New York, which was GE’s legal domicile, its headquarters, and housed more of its operations than any other state, including Massachusetts. Indeed, the Restatement observed that, generally, the insured risk will be located in the state where the policyholder is domiciled. Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws §193, comment b.

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Bluebook (online)
24 Mass. L. Rptr. 319, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/general-electric-co-v-lines-masssuperct-2008.