A regional metal fabrication company operating in southern Ontario received a coverage denial letter from its commercial general liability insurer 47 days after submitting a claim arising from an incident at its production facility. The letter cited 3 separate policy exclusions as grounds for denying both defence and indemnity obligations, leaving the company facing potential liability exposure exceeding $2.1 million from claims brought by a neighbouring property owner and a group of 8 former employees.
The underlying incident occurred when a storage vessel containing industrial solvents used in the company's degreasing operations failed during overnight hours. The failure released approximately 4,500 litres of solvent, which migrated through a drainage channel onto the adjacent commercial property, contaminating soil and damaging inventory stored in an outdoor staging area. The neighbouring property owner filed suit seeking remediation costs, property damage, and business interruption losses. Separately, a group of former employees who had worked in the facility's finishing department brought claims alleging that long-term exposure to solvent vapours during their employment had caused respiratory and neurological injuries. The employees' claims included allegations that the company had knowingly continued operations despite awareness of inadequate ventilation systems.
The insurer's denial letter invoked the policy's pollution exclusion with respect to all claims, characterizing the solvent release as discharge of a pollutant regardless of whether the release was sudden or gradual. The letter further invoked an exclusion for expected or intended injury with respect to the employee claims, citing the allegations of the company's knowledge of ventilation deficiencies as evidence that resulting harm was foreseeable. Finally, the denial referenced an absolute exclusion for claims arising from employment-related bodily injury, asserting that such claims fell within the exclusive domain of workers' compensation regardless of the employees' current status.
The company's insurance broker, who had placed the policy 14 months earlier following a competitive marketing process, now faced questions about whether the exclusions had been adequately disclosed during the placement process and whether alternative coverage structures might have addressed any of the exposures at issue. The policy itself was a standard commercial general liability form with manuscript endorsements, and the company also carried an environmental liability policy with a different insurer, though the coordination between the 2 policies remained unclear. Internal communications from the broker's file reflected conversations about pollution coverage during the placement process, but no written coverage summary had been provided to the client documenting the scope of exclusions in the program ultimately bound.