Number of Occurrences / Salmonella

California Federal Court rejects insurer’s attempt to limit its losses to a single occurrence limit of $1M.

A California Federal District Court denied a motion for summary judgment seeking a ruling that a salmonella outbreak arose out of a single occurrence, thereby limiting the CGL insurer’s liability to a $1,000,000 single occurrence limit.  The court reasoned that federal regulators had yet to determine a single cause of the contamination of imported yellow fin tuna from India.  It held that it was necessary to track the source or sources of the contamination back to India, and noted that the FDA may have identified multiple causes at the processing facility.  Therefore, because a question of fact remained, the court denied the insurer’s motion for summary judgment. Golden Eagle Ins. Corp. v. Moon Marine USA Corp., No. 3:12-cv-05438, (D. Cal. Nov. 15, 2013).

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