Court of Appeals holds that there is no coverage under claims-made policies unless claims are both made and reported during policy period

In In Gargano v. Liberty Int'l Underwriters, Inc., the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit made the obvious ruling that there is no coverage under policies requiring that claims be made and reported during the policy period for a claim that was not both made and reported during the policy period.

The plaintiff was an attorney who had three consecutive claims-made professional liability policies running from September 1, 2004 to September 1, 2007.

The plaintiff was sued in March 2005 for enforcement of an attorney's lien on a worker's compensation claim. (Attorney's liens are filed by attorneys who work on contingency fee cases that are taken over by another attorney. It protects their right to a reasonable fee for the work they did by placing a lien on the attorney's fees eventually received by successor counsel.) He did not report the claim to his insurers until after judgment entered against him in July 2007.

The court held that there was no coverage under the first policy because the claim was not reported during the policy period. It held that there was no coverage under the third policy because the claim was not made during the policy period.