Pa. Judge Allows Minor League Baseball Team’s COVID-19 Coverage Action to Proceed

SCRANTON, Pa. — A Pennsylvania judge has allowed a minor league baseball team’s COVID-19 coverage action to proceed against Continental Casualty Co. and its parent companies, ruling that it sufficiently alleged the virus caused it to sustain “direct physical loss of or damage to” its insured property.

In an Aug. 4 order, Judge Terrence R. Nealon of the Lackawanna County (Pa.) Court of Common Pleas applied the “physical contamination theory,” which states that business interruption coverage is available if the policyholder alleges COVID-19 was present on its property and that it caused the premises to become “uninhabitable, unusable, inaccessible, or …