Tred R. Eyerly | Insurance Law Hawaii | September 11, 2019
The Seventh Circuit found that the insurer was obligated to pay for siding of a building that was not damaged by hail so that it matched the replaced damaged portions of the siding. Windridge of Naperville Condominium Association v. Philadelphia Indem. Ins. Co., 2019 U.S. App. 23607 (7th Cir. Aug. 7, 2019).
A hail and wind storm damaged buildings owned by Windridge. The storm physically damaged the aluminum siding on the buildings’ sought and west sides. Philadelphia Indemnity, Windridge’s insurer, contended that it was only required to replace the siding on those sides. Windridge argued that replacement siding that matched the undamaged north and east elevations was no longer available, so Philadelphia had to replace the siding on all four sides of the buildings to that all of the siding matched.
Windridge sued and moved for summary judgment. The district court ruled that matching was required. The only sensible result was to treat the damage as having occurred to the building’s siding as a whole.
The policy was a replacement-cost policy. Philadelphia promised to “pay for direct physical ‘loss’ to ‘Covered Property’ caused by or resulting from” the storm, with the amount of loss being “the cost to replace the lost or damaged property with other property . . . of comparable material and quality . . . and . . . used for the same purpose.” The loss payment provision offered four different measures for loss, leaving Philadelphia free to choose the least expensive: (1) pay the value of the lost or damaged property; (2) pay the cost of repairing or replacing the lost or damaged property; (3) take all or any part of the property at an agreed or appraised value; or (4) repair, rebuild or replace the property with other property of like kind and quality.
The Seventh Circuit noted that the district court’s conclusion that the buildings as a whole were damaged – and that all of the siding must be replaced to ensure matching – was a sensible construction of the policy language as applied to the facts. Philadelphia’s interpretation – pay to replace only the specific panels of siding that were directly hit by hail, leading to two-tone buildings – was less reasonable. Regardless, the unit of covered property consider under the policy (each panel of siding vs. each side vs. the buildings as a whole) was ambiguous as applied to the facts, so the interpretation that led to coverage was favored.
Here, each building as a whole suffered direct physical loss as a result of the storm. The storm altered the appearance of the buildings such that they were damaged. Due to the extent of the damage and the lack of matching siding available on the market, the better construction of the ambiguous policy was to require Philadelphia to replace the siding on all four elevations of the buildings. The district court’s judgment in favor of Windridge was affirmed.