Client:

Motors Liquidation Company and Motors Liquidation Company DIP Lenders

Issue:

As part of the General Motors (GM) bankruptcy, an entity called the Motors Liquidation DIP Lenders Trust (Trust) was assigned coverage rights under certain excess policies as part of GM’s decades-long liabilities coverage program.  With Perkins Coie as counsel, the Trust brought suit—one of the largest coverage actions on record for long-tail claims—against 30 insurance companies and sought coverage for the historical asbestos and environmental liabilities of pre-bankruptcy GM.  The beneficiary of the Trust and any recoveries is the U.S. Treasury Department.

Challenge:

The case involves years of policies sold by 30 different insurers and requires intricate analysis of slight variations in policy language and the effect of provisions whereby excess policies “follow form” to the coverage terms and conditions of underlying policies.  Faced with so many insurers on the other side, the Trust has also sought to avoid potentially massive, unnecessary and costly discovery by seeking early court resolution of threshold coverage issues.

Solution:

Perkins Coie has won two forum battles for the Trust, resulting in the litigation going forward in the Trust’s chosen forum of Delaware rather than the insurers’ favored forum of New York.

Our team has also successfully obtained a ruling from the court that the language of the policies and the applicable law clearly support a finding that GM’s asbestos product liability losses arise from a single “occurrence,” although the court is allowing discovery on purported extrinsic evidence before granting partial summary judgment on the issue.  Over the life of the case, Perkins Coie has negotiated successful settlements with multiple insurers.