Columbia Cas. Co. v. Plantation Pipe Line Co.

The trial court properly granted the plaintiff's motion for summary judgment and properly denied the defendant's motion in the plaintiff's action seeking a declaration as to each of its excess liability insurers' respective share of the plaintiff's losses arising from a pipeline leak over a 30-year period.

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Plantation Pipe Line Company filed this action in the Superior Court of Fulton County against five of its excess liability insurers, including Columbia Casualty Company, seeking relief including a declaratory judgment as to each insurer’s respective share of Plantation’s losses arising from a pipeline leak. See Plantation Pipe Line Co. v. Stonewall Ins. Co., 335 Ga. App. 302 780 SE2d 501 2015, cert. denied April 26, 2016 appeal by Plantation from order granting summary judgment in favor of another of Plantation’s excess liability insurers, Stonewall Insurance Company. Plantation and Columbia filed cross-motions for summary judgment. The trial court granted Plantation’s motion and denied Columbia’s cross-motion. Columbia appeals both rulings, contending that the trial court erred in allocating all of Plantation’s losses to the policies that were in place at the time of the fuel leak, rather than allocating Plantation’s losses pro rata among the multiple, successive policies that were issued to Plantation over the thirty-year period during which the environmental contamination continued to accrue. When Plantation’s losses are properly allocated, Columbia contends, the losses attributable to the policy period of the Columbia policy as a matter of law did not reach the attachment point of the policy, which is a prerequisite to coverage under the policy. For the reasons explained below, we affirm.

The record shows the following relevant undisputed facts.1 On April 2, 1976, Plantation employees discovered that turbine fuel had leaked from an underground Plantation pipeline located in Cabarrus County, North Carolina. Plantation Pipe Line Co. v. Stonewall Ins. Co., 335 Ga. App. at 303. Within 24 hours, Plantation repaired the pipeline and cleaned up the leak. Id. Without resorting to insurance, it compensated the only affected landowner $50. Id. More than thirty years later, on April 3, 2007, one of Plantation’s workers found contaminated soil during maintenance of Plantation’s pipeline, and the contamination was traced to the 1976 leak.

Columbia Cas. Co. v. Plantation Pipe Line Co.

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