Does a Water Backup Exclusion Include Sewage?

Water damage and more specifically “water-backup” claims seem to continue to be a sticky subject.  Here is an article by “Claims Journal” you may find interesting:

Standard property policies typically contain an exclusion which provides that the insurer “will not pay for loss or damage caused directly or indirectly by . . . water that backs up or overflows from a sewer, drain, or sump.” A reasonable reading of that language would likely include within the application of the exclusion, damage caused by sewerage that backed up or overflowed from the sewer. Not so fast. Until recently in Ohio, the water-backup exclusion had been found to not include damage caused by sewerage as a result of the backup or overflow. However, in AKC, Inc. v. United Specialty Insurance Co., 2021-Ohio-3540, 187 N.E.3d 501 (Ohio 10/6/21), the Ohio Supreme Court reversed the ruling of the Ohio Ninth District Court of Appeals and found that a water-backup exclusion necessarily included sewerage within the scope of the exclusion. The Court of Appeals had found that the exclusion was ambiguous because it did not specifically use the word “sewerage.”

read the entire article by visiting “Claims Journal”