Admiral Ins. Co. v. Superior Court of San Diego Cnty.

*384 This is a case about the meaning of a professional liability insurance policy. The policy in question was issued by petitioner *649 Admiral Insurance Company (Admiral) to the real party in interest, A Perfect Match, Incorporated *385 (Perfect Match), a company that "match[es] surrogates and egg donors with infertile families." On the first page of the policy Admiral promised to provide coverage for certain claims made during the policy period arising from a "professional incident, ... provided that prior to the inception date of the policy, no insured knew, nor could have reasonably foreseen, that the professional incident might result in a claim." In other words, Admiral was excluding coverage for potential claims that Perfect Match knew or reasonably should have known about, but failed to disclose.

In this case, prior to purchasing the Admiral policy, there is no question Perfect Match knew about a potential claim former clients Monica Ghersi and Carlos Arango intended to file arising from the birth of their daughter with a rare form of eye cancer. A lawyer representing Ghersi and Arango sent a letter to Perfect Match in June 2012 giving notice of their intent to file a…