Insurance Law

Abracadabra: anti-concurrent cause and the search for 'illusory' insurance coverage

By David Rossmiller

I was looking through my Bloglines feedreader last night under my folder labeled "anti-concurrent cause," and saw this really good post from the Slabbed blog.   This is a fascinating discussion not only of Katrina damage, but of the theory of illusory insurance coverage.  It's old, now, the post, from the nostalgia file, but it is still worth talking about.  

Now, as many of you know, in the course of my work I represent both policyholders and insurance companies, so I really don't have a dog in the fight (apologies to Michael Vick, I know the metaphor might be a touchy subject), and I have no particular ideology when it comes to insurance.  I like insurance theory because it, in many ways, is like Plato's Allegory of the Cave, in his Republic: it is merely a metaphor for the human condition and the limits not only of attempts to order and describe human behavior according to the logos -- rational principles in harmony with the universe  -- but also of the limits of human understanding.  The concept of causation, of which anti-concurrent cause theory is a part, and of 'illusory' coverage are just some of the shadows on Plato's cave wall. 

I'm sure that if you go looking for illusory coverage you can find or think of some examples, but as it is discussed in most case law, illusory coverage seems to me a particularly hard-to-pin-down shadow on the wall.  In some ways, the theory of illusory coverage is itself illusory, in other words, and I have great confidence that whatever it is and wherever it is, it is not found in anti-concurrent cause language in insurance policies, at least the way I explain anti-concurrent cause.  So I can't agree with the premise presented, both by the author, nowdoucit, and quoted material from policyholder lawyer Chip Merlin, that anti-concurrent cause language is in any way ambiguous or illusory. 

The key to what I am saying here is that anti-concurrent cause is merely a causation analysis that is present in the contract and overturns the common law default analysis of efficient proximate cause, and another key is the realization that insurance policy language is full of special definitions and terms of art that are not necessarily the same as English.  This fact of life is because insurance policy drafters attempt to respond, in addition to the changes in the nature and amount of losses, to court decisions.  I don't see anti-concurrent cause as actually removing any coverage from a policy, but even if it did, this is not a startling idea -- exclusions do the same.  A causation analysis just defines the relationship between forces and coverage, it just tells how to apply the language and terms of the policy.   Anti-concurrent cause analysis may take some work to understand, but at it's heart, it exists to keep uncovered damage from being covered, not the other way around.  Once you accept that, and it is difficult for many to accept, it is a direct route to realizing that the words "concurrently or in sequence," as found in anti-concurrent cause clauses, are words that are not nearly as expansive as might be imagined on first blush, but instead are pretty limited in application. 

I could go on and on about this -- I have before and I will again.  I'm going to be speaking about Katrina damage, wind vs. water (in the Vegas line wind is currently a two-touchdown favorite for coverage) and anti-concurrent cause theory and application in Seattle later this month at the PLRB conference.  For reasons I don't fully understand, I am actually speaking twice, they tell me, on March 24 and 26, I think are the dates.  If you're there, come to one of the speeches and we can talk about these shadows on the cave wall. 

Full post as published by Insurance Coverage Law Blog on March 06, 2009 (boomark / email).