My Take: This Is Bigger Than Just One Fight
Here’s why this case matters beyond Johns Manville and its insurers:
- Antitrust Meets Coverage Law— Most antitrust suits fall outside standard liability coverage, but disparagement carveouts create a critical opening. If a jury finds disparagement, insurers can’t easily run from coverage. Johns Manville is betting big on that language.
- Bad Faith Exposure— If Johns Manville proves its insurers had multiple chances to settle but chose trial instead, we’re looking at potential bad faith exposure — the kind that makes insurers pay not only the claim but punitive damages for putting their interests above the insured’s.
- Signal to Policyholders— Every corporate general counsel watching this will take note: antitrust verdicts can bleed into advertising injury coverage, creating a path to force insurers’ hands. That ripple effect could alter how carriers draft policies going forward.
What Johns Manville Argues
“Putting their interests ahead of their insured’s, the insurers subjected JM to a jury trial that did not need to occur,”the company said. And that’s the crux of its claim: the verdict was foreseeable, settlement opportunities were squandered, and now, insurers are ducking responsibility for a covered loss.
The case, Johns Manville Corp. et al. v. Liberty Mutual Fire Insurance Co. et al., No. 1:25-cv-02846 (D. Colo.), is shaping up to be not just about $22 million, but about how far insurers can stretch policy language to avoid paying when the stakes get ugly.
