The American Bar Association's Section of Litigation hosted the 2026 Insurance Coverage Litigation Committee Seminar on March 4–7, 2026, in Tucson, Arizona. The event brought together attorneys representing policyholders and insurers, as well as insurance consultants and experts, brokers, forensic experts, and other related professionals.

Senior leaders from Alvarez & Marsal’s Disputes and Investigations practice, including Nancy Gutzler, Elizabeth Hanke, Robert Lang, Nicholas DeLuca, Robert Parrish, and Christopher Miller, attended the seminar and engaged in discussions on a range of subjects in insurance litigation. The sessions explored topics including allocation of long-tail claims, evolving personal jurisdiction standards, emerging contaminants, and complex construction-related coverage disputes.

1. Advanced Allocation for Long-Tail Claims

Managing Director Elizabeth Hanke participated as a panelist during a session addressing allocation of long-tail claims. Allocating continuous, indivisible harms, such as asbestos, sexual abuse, or environmental exposure, across multiple years of coverage requires determining how liability can be distributed among triggered policies spanning different periods and with different terms. This type of analysis involves both legal interpretation and mathematically sophisticated modeling along with the technical capability to allocate losses across complex insurance programs. Below are a few of the allocation-related topics discussed:

• Pro Rata vs. All Sums Allocation: While professionals often use these terms to characterize allocation methodology generally, establishing whether a state applies “all sums” (allowing the insured to target a single policy period for the entire loss) or “pro rata” (requiring a method for sharing costs between insurers in different time periods) is only the first step in determining financial responsibility. For instance, pro-rata allocation models can shift dramatically depending on whether a jurisdiction requires allocation based strictly on “time on the risk” or weighted proportionality based on policy limits. Because historical insurance programs can be messy, a legal allocation theory that appears relatively simple often proves problematic when applied to an entire coverage period. 
• Competing Policy Terms: Allocation modeling is highly sensitive to overlapping, ambiguous, and sometimes contradictory policy clauses. Application of non-cumulation clauses, applicability of limits in multi-year policies, and self-insured retentions can provide insight as to the impact of the various interpretations of the policy terms. A non-cumulation clause, for instance, can render coverage "illusory" if a court determines it reduces available limits based on losses covered by prior policies.
• Bermuda Form Nuances: Policyholders mixing domestic CGL programs with Bermuda Form and other occurrence-reported policies face integration hurdles. Bermuda policies use integrated occurrence batching and usually mandate arbitration, which raises the risk of inconsistent outcomes and potential double recoveries between US courts and foreign arbitration panels.

2. Personal Jurisdiction

The implications of the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Ry. Co. disrupted traditional understandings of where corporate defendants can be sued. [1] The ruling reaffirms the validity of the 1917 decision in Pennsylvania Fire, which held that states may treat a corporation’s registration to do business as consent to general personal jurisdiction where their statutes expressly provide for it. [2]

This ruling allows plaintiffs to bring lawsuits against corporations in jurisdictions where the injury did not occur and where the company is not headquartered, so long as the state has an explicit statute providing that registration constitutes consent to jurisdiction. This is an evolving issue, and courts are divided on implementation. For instance, states like Georgia and Pennsylvania interpret their statutes broadly, while some federal district courts in states like Iowa and Indiana have ruled more narrowly, requiring specific statutory language. [3]

The wide disparity in how jurisdictions handle these issues creates risk for both policyholders and insurers, who are increasingly using declaratory judgment actions to control forum and frame coverage disputes in favorable jurisdictions.

3. Emerging Contaminants (PFAS, EtO, and Microplastics)

Environmental coverage discussions focused on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), ethylene oxide (EtO), and microplastics.

• PFAS: Nicknamed "forever chemicals," this class of chemicals is prevalent in everything from firefighting foam to biosolids used in agriculture. As environmental regulations increasingly target even trace levels (parts per trillion), the costs of specialized laboratory testing and disposal of PFAS can be very high. Claims have been brought across a wide range of alleged exposures, including occupational exposure, consumer products, and municipal water treatment projects. Some of the largest payouts to date, including a settlement exceeding $10 billion, [4] stemmed from municipal water claims, driven by costs required to retrofit local water treatment plants to filter out PFAS chemicals. 
• Pollution Exclusions and Permitted Releases: Application of the pollution exclusion has been contested for decades. In the recent Griffith Foods case, [5] the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that standard pollution exclusions apply to EtO emissions, rejecting the policyholder's argument that the exclusion should not apply because the environmental releases were permitted by regulators.  The Seventh Circuit subsequently confirmed that the exclusion applies regardless of regulatory compliance, strengthening the insurers’ position. These developments are likely to extend to PFAS and other emerging contaminant coverage disputes. 

4. Complex Construction Defect Claims

Litigation surrounding large-scale construction projects continues to generate friction over policy triggers, overlapping coverage, and the definition of defective work.

• CGL vs. Builder’s Risk Policies: Commercial general liability policies cover third-party liability for property damage, whereas builder's risk is a first-party policy covering direct physical loss to the project during ongoing construction. Crucially, builder's risk generally excludes defective workmanship itself.
• "Rip and Tear" Damages: Courts strictly analyze coverage for the costs of removing and replacing defective work. If a defective component (e.g., an anchor system) does not cause damage to other property, the costs incurred to destroy surrounding nondefective property to fix the defect are typically not covered.

How A&M Can Help

The evolving corporate risk landscape requires legal and compliance teams to adopt a highly coordinated, data-driven approach to coverage disputes. Alvarez & Marsal’s Disputes and Investigations practice is uniquely positioned to assist clients throughout the entire lifecycle of these highly complex insurance recovery efforts. From initial risk assessment through potential settlement or litigation, our experts assist clients on a wide variety of high-profile matters involving product liability, mass toxic torts, and mass disaster torts.

Further bolstering our team's capabilities are the recent additions of Managing Directors Nancy Gutzler and Elizabeth Hanke, who bring decades of experience in insurance coverage litigation, product liability, and the calculation of damages in complex, data-intensive insurance disputes.

Our team has deep expertise in developing cutting-edge allocation and valuation models used to recover billions of dollars for policyholders. Whether it requires designing a cross-platform database for managing a massive influx of PFAS claims, forecasting liability for emerging long-tail claims, or providing expert testimony, A&M provides the mathematical rigor and strategic analyses necessary to recover insurance for complex liabilities.

1. Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co., 600 U.S. ___ (2023) (No. 21‑1168; decided June 27, 2023).
2. Pennsylvania Fire Insurance Co. of Philadelphia v. Gold Issue Mining & Milling Co., 243 U.S. 93 (1917).
3. See Kelchner v. CRST Expedited, Inc., 2025 WL 3682990 (Iowa Dec. 19, 2025) and Lemaster v. Ford Motor Co., No. 2:21-cv-00017, 2023 WL 3605979 (N.D. Ind. May 23, 2023).
4. Britt E. Erickson, “Court approves $10 billion PFAS settlement | 3M to pay public utilities over the next 13 years to resolve lawsuits over ‘forever chemicals’ in drinking water,” Chemical & Engineering News, April 3, 2024.
5. Griffith Foods International, Inc. v. National Union Fire Insurance Co. of Pittsburgh, PA, 2026 IL 131710 (Ill. Jan. 23, 2026).