In Illinois, the state Supreme Court delivered insurers a cleaner line to draw in pollution-coverage fights, holding that a company’s government permits do not, by themselves, neutralize the pollution exclusion in a standard commercial general liability policy. The ruling—arising from ethylene oxide emissions claims tied to a sterilization facility—reverses lower-court decisions and resolves a long-running split, narrowing policyholders’ arguments that “authorized” emissions should trigger a defense despite exclusionary wording. Full story here
In Florida, GEICO is trying to turn the courthouse into a fraud-fighting tool by invoking the federal RICO statute against what it calls an assembly-line network of injury clinics and telehealth support, alleging more than $26 million in fraudulent personal injury protection billings across 14 locations. The complaint sketches a familiar modern insurance confrontation—medical directors in name, standardized diagnoses in practice—while wagering that racketeering claims can raise the stakes high enough to deter copycat operations in a state where PIP litigation has long been a cottage industry. Full story here
And in Los Angeles, a $7.1 million home has become the unlikely focal point of a coverage trench war: Scottsdale Insurance says it has been left holding the defense bill for a general contractor sued over alleged construction defects, and it wants three other carriers—tied to subcontractors’ policies that purportedly name the contractor as an additional insured—to pay their share. The suit, filed January 22, 2026, is a reminder that in high-dollar defect cases, the real contest can be less about cracked stucco than about who pays to litigate it. Full story here
