Unreasonable Expectations: New Jersey Appellate Court Rejects Commercial Insured’s Reliance Solely on Policy’s Declarations Page

Key Takeaways:

  1. New Jersey courts have been increasingly reluctant to extend the protections of the reasonable expectations doctrine to commercial insureds
  2. In addition to making the usual policy-based arguments, an insurer facing a coverage action in New Jersey based on the reasonable expectations doctrine should be sure to challenge the sufficiency (or lack) of evidence presented by the insured with respect to its actual expectations of coverage
  3. New Jersey courts will consider extrinsic evidence to assess whether an insured’s claimed expectations are objectively reasonable

Further …

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