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Action Group Insurance Companies Lawsuit Overview:
- Who: CG Restaurants & Bars Limited, the owners of cocktail bars Dirty Martini and others, is starting legal proceedings against RSA and QIC Europe Ltd.
- Why: The hospitality group says it has formed an action group focused on recovering business interruption losses suffered during the pandemic and denied to it by the insurance companies.
- Where: The legal proceedings take place in the United Kingdom.
A UK hospitality group that owns the Dirty Martini cocktail bars has announced it is starting legal proceedings against insurance companies RSA and QIC Europe Ltd to recover pandemic business losses.
In a press release published Jan. 19 by law firm Edwin Coe LLP, the group said it had formed an action group to start proceedings against RSA and QIC to recover business interruption losses suffered as a result of COVID-19.
Led by CG Restaurants & Bars Limited, the owners of the well-known independent group of cocktail bars Dirty Martini and numerous other bars and restaurants across the UK, the group said it will focus on recovering an indemnity for the multiple lockdowns that have occurred as a result of the pandemic.
So far insurers have indemnified their insureds for lockdown one only, but that ignores the reality of the policy wording and the government’s response to increasing cases of Covid-19 throughout 2020, the plaintiffs say.
“This has been a horrendous time for the hospitality sector, and it will continue to be difficult in the near future,” CG Restaurants and Bars Director Daniel Coffer says. “Hospitality businesses have had to fight tooth and nail to obtain an indemnity from their insurers, notwithstanding the clear terms of the policies they purchased prior to the pandemic.”
Continued Effect of Omicron Highlighted Need To Take Legal Action, CG Director Says
Coffer says the continued effect of the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus was only highlighting the need for members of the hospitality sector to take legal action to recover the sums to which they are contractually entitled.
“Our claim alone is substantial, and there are others who no doubt have similar sized claims who need the protection that this class action will afford,” he says.
A spokesman for the law firm said the purpose of the legal proceedings’ action group was to establish the precedent that the RSA 3 wording, which is underwritten by RSA and QIC Europe Ltd, gives rise to multiple indemnity periods.
“And thus, potentially, responds to all the lockdowns and restrictions experienced by the hospitality sector in 2020,” the spokesman says.
Last year, the Northeast England-based pub chain Camerons Brewery Ltd. settled a lawsuit with RSA that argued that RSA should be responsible for covering the pub’s £1.7 million losses that came as a result of COVID-19 closures.
Do you think the insurance companies should cover multiple closures? Let us know in the comments!
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