Hunton Insurance Recovery Blog

In an article appearing in CyberInsecurity News, Hunton insurance recovery partner, Michael Levine, comments on Zurich American Insurance Company’s attempt to invoke a so-called “war exclusion” as a basis for not paying business income losses suffered by snack food giant Mondelez International.  As Levine expains, so-called “war exclusions” have rarely been invoked and only then, in times of clear military or state-sponsored activity.  The Mondelez case will therefore focus on whether a computer attack was indeed an act of war and, importantly, whether and how Zurich American has applied its war exclusion in other cases.  Mondelez was one of many victims of the NotPetya ransomware attack in 2017.  As Levine explains in the article, among other things, Mondelez “certainly will want to see, want to know how many other claims [Zurich] had involving NotPetya. How many other war exclusions did it use?”