{"id":5446,"date":"2025-04-24T08:19:16","date_gmt":"2025-04-24T08:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/dispute-over-historic-church-bell-tower-collapse-moves-forward-against-insurer-judge-rules\/"},"modified":"2025-04-24T08:19:16","modified_gmt":"2025-04-24T08:19:16","slug":"dispute-over-historic-church-bell-tower-collapse-moves-forward-against-insurer-judge-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/dispute-over-historic-church-bell-tower-collapse-moves-forward-against-insurer-judge-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"Dispute Over Historic Church Bell Tower &#8216;Collapse&#8217; Moves Forward Against Insurer, Judge Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div data-v-e97bc92c=\"\">\n<div data-v-e97bc92c=\"\">\n<p>On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy of the District of Massachusetts <a href=\"https:\/\/storage.courtlistener.com\/recap\/gov.uscourts.mad.253937\/gov.uscourts.mad.253937.68.0_3.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" link-data=\"{\" cms.site.owner=\"\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">denied<\/a> Church Mutual Insurance Co.&#8217;s motion for summary judgment in a coverage dispute with the First Baptist Church in Newton. The church filed suit in February 2023, after its insurer denied coverage for damage to the church&#8217;s bell tower after stones fell, causing damage to the tower itself and its sanctuary. Church Mutual claimed the bell tower&#8217;s fallen stones did not constitute a &#8220;collapse&#8221; under its policy because the structure remained standing, among other things. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>  <!----> <!----> <!----><\/p>\n<div data-v-e97bc92c=\"\">\n<p>The court denied Church Mutual&#8217;s summary judgment motion, determining that the definition of &#8220;collapse&#8221; was ambiguous under the church&#8217;s operative policy. Murphy also said the church failed to establish that the bell tower &#8220;collapse&#8221; had not occurred and that the disputed history of structural decay within the bell tower made summary judgment inappropriate at this stage in the litigation. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <!----> <!----> <!----> <!----><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy of the District of Massachusetts denied Church Mutual Insurance Co.&#8217;s motion for summary judgment in a coverage dispute with the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5629,5014,4993,323,2398,2397,423,693,351,5630],"class_list":["post-5446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-bell","tag-church","tag-collapse","tag-dispute","tag-historic","tag-insurer","tag-judge","tag-moves","tag-rules","tag-tower"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5446","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=5446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}