The letter arrived by registered mail on a Thursday afternoon, addressed to the president of a mid-sized engineering consulting firm operating out of Edmonton. The firm's commercial general liability insurer had received notice of a claim 6 weeks earlier, acknowledged the submission, and assigned defence counsel within the standard timeframe. Nothing in those initial communications suggested anything unusual. The reservation of rights letter changed that understanding entirely, and the firm's leadership found themselves navigating a claims process that had become materially more complex than they had anticipated when they first reported the matter.
The underlying claim arose from a commercial development project in central Alberta where the firm had provided structural engineering services under a fixed-fee contract executed 14 months before the alleged incident. A general contractor retained by the property developer alleged that design errors in the firm's structural drawings caused construction delays, required remediation work, and resulted in consequential losses. The statement of claim, filed in the Court of King's Bench of Alberta, sought damages of approximately $1.8 million, including direct costs of approximately $640,000 for remediation and the balance representing delay damages, lost profits, and related claims.
The insurer's reservation of rights letter identified 3 potential coverage issues. First, the policy contained an exclusion for claims arising from cost estimates or cost projections, and portions of the contractor's claim appeared to relate to budgetary representations allegedly made during the design phase. Second, the policy required notice of any circumstance that might reasonably give rise to a claim, and correspondence in the project file suggested the firm had been aware of concerns about the structural drawings for approximately 4 months before formally notifying the insurer. Third, certain of the claimed losses might fall outside the professional services coverage and into excluded categories of contractual liability.
The insurer confirmed it would provide a defence while reserving its position on indemnity, and the defence counsel it had appointed began preparing the response to the statement of claim. The firm's president, a licensed professional engineer with 22 years of experience but limited exposure to insurance disputes, received the letter and its attachments without fully understanding what the reservation signified or what steps the firm should consider taking in response. The firm carried $2 million in per-occurrence coverage with a $25,000 deductible, and its renewal was scheduled for 90 days from the date of the reservation letter.
The contractor's counsel had indicated a willingness to discuss early resolution, and preliminary settlement discussions suggested the claim might resolve for an amount within policy limits. Whether the firm would have any voice in those discussions, whether it needed its own legal representation separate from insurer-appointed counsel, and what obligations it owed to the insurer while coverage remained uncertain were questions that required immediate attention. The relationship between firm and insurer, cooperative at the outset, now operated under a different dynamic entirely.