Seen at Business Insurance:
The U.S. Supreme Court refused Tuesday to hear a case in which a federal appeals court ruled that property insurance policies did not cover flood damage in New Orleans caused by the failure of levees during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
In its Aug. 2, 2007, decision in the Katrina Canal Breaches Litigation, which it revised on Aug. 30, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that “even if plaintiffs can prove that the levees were negligently designed, constructed or maintained and that the breaches were due to this negligence, the flood exclusions in the plaintiffs’ policies unambiguously preclude their recovery.”
Repeat after me: A flood is a flood is a flood.
It’s nice to see the courts continuing to see sense here, and hopefully this will finally close the book on this unfortunate chapter of the Katrina mess.