Insurance Law Lesson 60: Completed Ops (2)

Several years ago I litigated a high value insurance case that came down to whether the injury was within the PCOH (see Lesson 59).

The insured had sold a concrete pumper truck with a 60 foot boom. With the sale, the insured agreed to also provide training on the truck. There was a dispute about whether the training hours were completed. In any event, several months into its use, a piece of the boom fell off and severely injured a worker.

The injured worker sued many parties, including the company that had sold the pumper truck. I represented the insurer of the company that sold the pumper truck.

The policy at issue unambiguously excluded coverage for completed ops. For the insurer, I argued that the policyholder had completed its work when it delivered the pumper truck and, moreover, the pumper truck had been put to its intended use.

Our opponents asserted that the insured’s work was not complete because (they claimed) they had not provided the contracted amount of training hours. They then argued that the PCOH “put to use” referred not to the pumper truck, but to the massive, $4 billion project for which the truck had been purchased from the insured.

What do you think?

Leave a Reply