Westchester Fire Ins. Co. v. City of Pittsburg, Kan.

How courts have described this case

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

• concluding that the insurance company’s broad reading of “irritant or contaminant” to include a fogging mixture as a pollutant “stretch[es] the definition of ‘pollutant’ beyond “what a reasonable person placed in the position of the insured would have understood the word to mean.’
• stating that a ‘pollutant’ is not merely any substance that may cause harm to the ‘egg shell plaintiff,’ but rather it is a toxic or particularly harmful material which is recognized as such in industry or by governmental regulators.”
• defining a pollutant as a “toxic or particularly harmful material which is recognized as such in industry or by governmental regulators”
• pollution exclusion contemplates “long-term environmental degradation or, at the very least, an environment-wide exposure to extremely hazardous or toxic substances”
• pesticide is not intended to be excluded
• pesticide is not intended to be excluded

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).