{"id":2022,"date":"2024-07-26T20:04:56","date_gmt":"2024-07-26T20:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/mass-high-court-resolves-definition-of-surface-waters-in-insurance-dispute\/"},"modified":"2024-07-26T20:04:56","modified_gmt":"2024-07-26T20:04:56","slug":"mass-high-court-resolves-definition-of-surface-waters-in-insurance-dispute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/mass-high-court-resolves-definition-of-surface-waters-in-insurance-dispute\/","title":{"rendered":"Mass. High Court Resolves Definition of &#8216;Surface Waters&#8217; in Insurance Dispute"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mass.gov\/doc\/zurich-american-insurance-co-v-medical-properties-trust-inc-13535\/download\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">determined<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> the accumulation of rainwater on a building\u2019s roof does not constitute \u201csurface waters\u201d within the context of an insurer\u2019s \u201cflood\u201d property insurance policy this week, ending a four-year litigation battle over the interpretation under state law.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The decision answered a certified question from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. In it, the state high court relied on the term\u2019s ambiguity and said its vagueness within the policies resulted in the court resolving the issue in favor of the policyholders, who submitted claims for more than $200 million for flooding damage to a hospital\u2019s basement. This determination will allow the policyholders, represented by attorneys with Foley Hoag and Todd &amp; Weld in Boston, to use the higher limit overall insurance policy rather than the limits of the flood sub-limit coverage, the state court concluded in an opinion issued July 23.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court\u00a0determined the accumulation of rainwater on a building\u2019s roof does not constitute \u201csurface waters\u201d within the context of an insurer\u2019s \u201cflood\u201d property insurance policy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[143,2424,323,327,1566,801,2745,2746,2747],"class_list":["post-2022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-court","tag-definition","tag-dispute","tag-high","tag-insurance","tag-mass","tag-resolves","tag-surface","tag-waters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}