Extrinsic Facts in Ill. Duty to Defend Analyses in 2015
Chicago partner David Cutter’s article – “ Extrinsic Facts in Ill. Duty to Defend Analyses in 2015” - was published in Law360 on January 19. In it, he discusses Illinois as a hotbed for insurance coverage law, and the challenges associated with duty to defend inquiries under Illinois law.
“The extrinsic facts doctrine [makes] the analysis of a duty to defend under Illinois law even more of a challenge (and thus increases the concomitant risk of estoppel resulting from an erroneous determination of the duty to defend),” he stated. “The recent case law on this issue demonstrates that whether the insurer must consider the extrinsic facts in evaluating the duty to defend depends on where the extrinsic facts fit on a continuum involving: (1) the relationship between the extrinsic facts and the issues in the underlying case; (2) the source of the extrinsic facts; and (3) the objective nature of the extrinsic facts.”