Owners of a San Francisco restaurant had no reason to expect their insurance to pay for pandemic-related losses even though their policy included coverage for virus-caused damages, California’s Supreme Court unanimously held Thursday.
In a 27-page opinion, the court said John’s Grill’s property insurance, specifically its “limited fungi, bacteria or virus coverage,” only offered payouts for virus contamination caused by a small set of circumstances, including fire or a windstorm. That coverage by Sentinel Insurance Co. did not extend to economic losses caused by the eatery’s government-ordered COVID-19 closure, the court concluded.
