缅北轮奸

Aspen Specialty Insurance Co. has reached a settlement with the owners of a Nashville condominium building that was badly damaged in the Christmas Day bombing in 2020.

The terms of the settlement were not disclosed. Both sides have agreed to dismiss the 2023 lawsuit, according to an agreement filed in federal court in Tennessee.

“The Plaintiff, Aspen Specialty Insurance Company, and Defendant, The Quarters Condominium Association, Inc., hereby stipulate through their respective counsel that this case is dismissed with prejudice to the re-filing thereof, with each party to bear its own costs and attorney fees,” the stipulation reads.

The bombing, which authorities determined to be the work of a lone-wolf suicide bomber, damaged some 60 properties in an historic part of Nashville. Aspen had agreed in 2021 to pay $4.3 million on its policy on the 134-year-old Quarters Condominium building. But the condo association argued it was due almost $11 million, thanks to a guaranteed replacement-cost endorsement in the policy.

Aspen countered that an exclusion in the policy barred full coverage for “building(s) that have been designated by any local, state or national governmental agency as an historic structure or landmark.”

A federal judge in June 2024 ruled that a single word in the policy proved that the exclusion applied only if the insured structure itself was designated an historic landmark. In this case, city officials had deemed the neighborhood an historic district, but the condo building was not singled out.

“By its plain language, for the exclusion to apply, the property must have been ‘designated’ by a government agency as a ‘historic structure or landmark,'” U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger wrote in the 2024 decision. The site had been identified on the National Register of Historic Places inventory, but that does not automatically confer a historic structure status.

“Aspen could have, but did not, include language in the Policy excluding from coverage any property within a designated historical district,” the judge wrote.

Aspen further argued that the property must be considered “historic” since it is more than 50 years old. But merely being old does not make something historically significant, Trauger said. The wording of the exclusion was not ambiguous, the judge added. But even if it had been, years of statutes and court decisions dictate that the policy be construed in favor of the insured.

The dispute was scheduled for mediation this spring with a mediation report due this week, court filings show.

Attorneys involved in the case could not be reached for comment Wednesday morning.

Photo: The Quarters, about a year after the bombing. (Google Maps)

Related: Aspen Files for IPO, Again

Topics Excess Surplus