Insurers say policies for natural or man-made
disasters don’t cover virus outbreaks that bring
economies to a standstill, and high-stakes
battles in courtrooms coast to coast are sure
to follow. What’s at stake could be the survival
of thousands of businesses if insurers don’t
pay and the insolvency of big-name insurance
companies if they do.
“Pandemic outbreaks are uninsured because
they are uninsurable,” David A. Sampson,
president of the American Property Casualty
Insurance Association, said this month.
No revenue is flowing into the Billy Goat,
which previously drew hundreds of tourists a
day, including some who remember the best-
known line from a series of late 1970s SNL
skits in which restaurant staff rebuffs patrons
ordering anything but the house specialties:
“Cheezborger, cheezborger, cheezborger! No
Coke ... Pepsi!”
As many as 30 million small businesses straining
to survive with little to no revenue could submit
virus-related claims worth up to $430 billion,
the insurance association estimated. Those
unprecedented numbers would be multiple times
higher than claims following the Sept. 11 attacks.
The expectation is that insurers will continue
to reject the vast majority of claims, triggering
waves of lawsuits from businesses in nearly
every town and city. Such a filing frenzy could
add to logjams in courts when they reopen fully
after the pandemic eases.
Among dozens of lawsuits filed to date is one by
the Choctaw Nation casinos in Oklahoma and
another by the Los Angeles law firm of celebrity
attorney Mark Geragos.