Tag: lead paint

Emerging Issues

Georgia Joins Growing Consensus that Lead-Based Paint is a Pollutant

For the first time, the Supreme Court of Georgia declared that lead-based paint is a “pollutant” as the term is used in the absolute pollution exclusion of a commercial general liability policy.

The plaintiff, Amy Smith, individually and on behalf of her daughter, sued her landlord, Bobby Chupp for injuries the daughter sustained as the result of ingesting lead from deteriorating lead-based paint at the house Smith rented from Chupp. Chupp held a CGL policy issued by Georgia Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Company (GFB) that …

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Policy Conditions, Considerations, Construction, and Formation

Lead Paint is Not an Excluded Pollutant in CGL Pollution Exclusion

In a personal injury action involving ingestion of lead-based paint in the house the claimant rented from the insured, the majority of the First Division Georgia Court of Appeals held that a policy’s pollution exclusion does not bar coverage for underlying personal injury claims, because lead-based paint was not specifically listed as a pollutant in the policy. Therefore, the exclusion did not exclude coverage for injuries arising out of the ingestion or inhalation of lead-based paint. This decision reversed the trial court grant of summary …

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