Minor League Baseball Teams Lose COVID-19 Coverage Battle in 9th Cir.

PHOENIX — The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has upheld dismissal of a COVID-19 business interruption insurance action filed by several minor league baseball teams, ruling the policies’ virus exclusion bars coverage for their claimed losses.

In an Oct. 1 opinion, the panel agreed with insurers National Casualty Co., Scottsdale Indemnity Co. and Scottsdale Insurance Co., that the virus exclusion applies because the COVID-19 virus is the “efficient proximate cause” of the teams’ losses.

The teams sued the insurers in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, accusing them of breaching the policies by denying coverage …