Procedural Posture

Plaintiff property owners appealed judgments of the Superior Court of Orange County (California), which granted summary adjudication to defendants, their homeowner’s insurance carriertheir insurance brokers, on claims relating to a course of construction policy.

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Table of Contents

Overview

The owners purchased a residential lot located on a steep slopeTheir lender required that they obtain a course of construction insurance policyAt the owners’ request, the insurance brokers procured the coverageThe policy provided collapse coverage, excluded earth movement,did not provide third party liability coverageA landslide caused severe damage to the homeThe owners sued the neighboring landownerscontractors, some of whom filed cross-complaintsThe court held that the insurance brokers had no duty to obtain general liability insurance because the owners did not request itdid not present evidence sufficient to raise a triable question of fact as to whether they reasonably believed they were obtaining itAn investigator’s evidence regarding a previous landslidethe placement of fill soil during grading showed that the claim was barred under the exclusion for earth movementThe collapse coverage provision did not apply because the alleged improper grading was a design errornot a defective method in constructionAlleged concealment of the previous landslide by the developer could not be considered the efficient proximate cause of the loss.