Maritime
Action Item: Courts must consider whether an insurance policy
incorporates other documents and the extent thereof in evaluating
the existence of additional insured coverage. Parties should
evaluate the policy and underlying contract language to ascertain
whether the insurance coverage matches indemnity obligations.
In the ongoing Deepwater Horizon saga, Transocean and
its insurers contested whether BP was entitled to additional
insured status under Transocean’s policy and the
parties’ drilling contract. The case went before the Fifth
Circuit Court of Appeals, which at first ruled in BP’s favor,
and then withdrew its opinion and certified two questions for the
Texas Supreme Court’s consideration. The first asked whether
an earlier decision in Evanston Insurance Co. v. ATOFINA
Petrochemicals, Inc., 256 S.W.3d 660 (Tex. 2008), compelled a
finding that BP was covered for the subsurface pollution damages
claimed because the language in the umbrella policy
