Westport Insurance Corporation v. Markham Group Inc. Ps

MEMORANDUM

Westport Insurance Corporation appeals the district court’s grant of summary judgment and attorney’s fees against it and in favor of the Markham Group, Inc., P.S. law firm and one of its members, Mark Kamitomo (collectively “insureds”) and one of their former clients, Rachel Naidu. We have jurisdiction and we reverse and remand.

(1) Insureds had a claims made and reported policy (hereafter “claims made policy”) with Westport effective July 1, 2007, which, inter alia, provided an exclusion for “any act, error, omission, circumstance or PERSONAL INJURY occurring prior to the effective date of this POLICY if any INSURED at the effective date knew or could have reasonably foreseen that such act, error, omission, circumstance or PERSONAL INJURY might be the basis of a CLAIM.” Prior to that date, the insureds knew that, due to errors on their part, a client’s case had been dismissed and could not be refiled. Indeed, they had been sanctioned at that time for filing a baseless claim without proper investigation. They assert that the exclusion does not apply because its language regarding reporting if their actions “might be the basis” of a claim was ambiguous. We disagree.…