Kenmore Army Navy Store added to list of businesses seeking business interruption coverage for Covid-19 losses

 

The Kenmore Army Navy Store (which is located in Downtown Crossing, several MBTA stops away from Kenmore), has sued Travelers Casualty Insurance Company of America in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.  Like so many other businesses, the Army Navy store seeks business interruption coverage for losses from the coronavirus pandemic.  

The store alleges that the policy Travelers issued has the usual coverage for "direct physical loss."  It alleges that the direct physical loss from the pandemic is "the property being damaged, access to the property being denied, customers being prevented from physically occupying the property, the property being physically uninhabitable by customers, the function of the property being nearly eliminated or destroyed, and/or a suspension of business operations occurring at the property." 

The store also alleges that the policy has no applicable exclusions -- meaning, presumably, that the policy does not contain a virus exclusion.  If that's correct, that's one legal hurdle the store does not have to jump over.

The store alleges breach of contract and, in what seems to me to be a bit of a stretch, breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing and of Mass. Gen. Laws ch, 93A.