Colleges found themselves being served with legal papers after the coronavirus shuttered campuses in the spring of 2020 and students and families sued, seeking to have tuition or room and board refunded. But Johson & Wales’ suit falls under another swelling category — organizations filing against their insurers, seeking reimbursement for losses tied to shutdown orders and COVID-19 mitigation measures.
The university purchased $500 million in commercial property and business interruption insurance policies from American Guarantee. They were to cover the period from May 2019 to May 2020 and May 2020 to May 2021, providing “broad ‘all-risk’ coverage,” the university’s lawsuit said. The 2019-20 policy explicitly covered losses related to communicable diseases, subject to a sublimit, it said.
