News & Insights

Please find the Winter 2025 edition of the Williams Kastner Northwest Insurance Law Newsletter. Our newsletter features articles regarding some of the most important decisions and developments in insurance law over the past few months. Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact Eliot Harris. Follow us on LinkedIn for more legal updates.

With the rise of abuse lawsuits in the past decade or so, and various insurers including additional language in liability policies to limit, or outright exclude coverage for such claims, Washington Courts have been faced with an increasing number of coverage lawsuits for abuse claims. One of the most recent decisions on this issue is...

In Northfield Insurance Company v. Yates, Wood & MacDonald, Inc., et al., Judge Tana Lin with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington found the insurance company had no duty to defend its insured in a negligent security case due to the policy’s exclusion for “assault or battery” and in doing so,...

In Derenski v. USAA General Indemnity Company, the Honorable James Robart held that an insurer’s underinsured motorist settlement offer does not constitute an “undisputed amount” where neither party characterized the offer as such and there was no demand for payment of any sum as an “undisputed amount”.  Accordingly, the nonpayment of such a settlement offer...

Following the landmark Oregon Supreme Court decision in Moody v. Oregon Community Credit Union, 371 Or. 772, 542 P.3d 24 (2023), which allowed for a negligence per se claim against an insurer, Oregon courts have been repeatedly asked to clarify the boundaries of insurer liability under Moody.  A recent Federal District Court of Oregon decision,...

Washington courts have long held that an insured may enter into a stipulated (or “covenant”) judgment with the plaintiff in a lawsuit. Whether the insurer is liable for the amount of the stipulated judgment usually is decided in a subsequent bad faith lawsuit.  However, before that happens, the insured and the plaintiff must conduct a...

Over the past few years, courts across the country have grappled with defining the commonly-used term “property damage” in first-party property insurance policies.  This question recently arose in a Washington Court of Appeals case, where the Court was asked to define this term in the context of a dispute over ownership of a horse. On...

Washington courts are familiar with litigation over liability under WISHA for employee injuries at multi-employer worksites (see, e.g., Stute v. P.B.M.C., Inc., 114 Wash.2d 454, 788 P.2d 545 (1990) and its numerous forebears).  However, the issue of insurance coverage in such cases is less commonly opined upon, likely because worksite insurance coverage is so often...