Montgomery Ward and Co. v. Home Ins. Co.

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• enforcing provision requiring notice “as soon as possible after the accident has been brought to the notice of the insurance department of the insured at its head office in Chicago”
• an excess insurer that only has a duty to indemnify has no obligation to issue a reservation-of-rights letter
• “A notice provision is a valid condition precedent and not a mere technical requirement that the insured is free to overlook or ignore with impunity.”
• the insurer \easily could have refused to have included this type of notice requirement in the policy” because \[[Insurance carriers are certainly sophisticated enough and wield sufficient bargaining power to protect their interests”
• “Lack of prejudice to the insurer is a factor to be considered only where the insured has a good excuse for the late notice or where the delay was relatively brief.”
• “insurer does not have to prove that it was prejudiced by an insured’s breach of the notice clause in a policy in order to be relieved of its duty to pay”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).