Playa Vista Conroe v. Insurance Company of the West, No. 20-20307 (5th Cir. 2021)
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After a Texas condo association suffered property damage during Hurricane Harvey, it filed a property-damage claim against its insurer. When the insurer refused to pay, the association filed suit for breach of its insurance contracts.
The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the association, holding the insurer liable. Applying de novo review, the court held that the association established coverage and that the insurer failed to prove that an exclusion applies. In this case, the association met its burden to show that its boat slips are covered in the absence of an applicable exclusion. Furthermore, in the face of an affidavit tending to establish that the boat slips were not destroyed by a "flood," the insurer could not carry its legal burden to prove one of the "flood" exclusions by submitting nothing. The court explained that this is particularly true where the policy exclusions on their face do not apply to the loss of the association's boat slips. Finally, the insurer conceded in the district court that the association's boat slips are covered by the storage provision, and the insurer cannot rely on the governmental-body exclusion.
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