JW Aluminum Co. is urging the Fourth Circuit to overturn a lower court’s ruling that capped its damages at $10 million, arguing that the fire and water damage it sustained should not be subject to any sublimit or exclusion due to a molten material endorsement.
In an appeal filed on Tuesday, JW Aluminum contended that a South Carolina federal judge made an error in determining that the molten material endorsement in its four all-risk policies unambiguously limited recovery for damages caused by fire, water, and a utility shutdown. These policies were issued by Ace American Insurance Co., AIG Specialty Insurance Co., Westport Insurance Corp., and General Security Indemnity Co. of Arizona.
“Allowing insurers to minimize coverage by selecting which link in a causal chain determines coverage when the policy is ambiguous on that point would render much insurance coverage illusory to the detriment of insureds in the state, going against decades of South Carolina public policy,” JW Aluminum argued to the Fourth Circuit.
