## Facts

- Metropolitan Life Insurance Company faced large-scale asbestos tort litigation alleging it failed to warn about asbestos hazards and participated in conduct that concealed risks.
- Claimants asserted Metropolitan had knowledge of asbestos dangers through its medical personnel and industry-related activities and failed to disclose or warn.
- Metropolitan incurred substantial defense and settlement costs across more than 200,000 asbestos-related claims.
- Metropolitan carried layered liability coverage, with primary and umbrella coverage below multiple excess policies issued by Aetna and other excess insurers.
- The relevant policies aggregated damages from “continuous or repeated exposure to substantially the same general conditions” into a single “occurrence,” but did not further define “occurrence.”
- Excess coverage attached only after exhaustion of underlying limits on a per-occurrence basis.
- Metropolitan sought to characterize the asbestos liabilities as a single occurrence (a continuing failure to warn or continuous wrongful conduct) to reach the excess attachment point.
- The excess insurers contended each claimant’s asbestos exposure (and resulting injury) constituted a separate occurrence, preventing the underlying per-occurrence limits from being exhausted across the entire portfolio of claims.

## Issues

1. Whether the insured’s alleged continuous failure to warn or related long-term conduct constituted a single “occurrence” under the liability policies.
2. Whether, instead, each claimant’s asbestos exposure constituted a separate “occurrence,” precluding aggregation of all asbestos claims to trigger excess coverage.

## Decision

- The Connecticut Supreme Court affirmed summary judgment for the excess insurers.
- The court held Metropolitan’s alleged failure to warn was not a single occurrence for coverage purposes.
- The court concluded each claimant’s exposure to asbestos constituted a separate occurrence under the policies’ exposure-based language.
- As a result, Metropolitan could not aggregate all asbestos defense and settlement costs into one occurrence to satisfy the excess policies’ attachment requirements.

## Legal Principles

- When a policy ties an “occurrence” to “continuous or repeated exposure to substantially the same general conditions,” the relevant occurrence analysis focuses on the injurious exposure experienced by claimants rather than the insured’s overarching course of conduct.
- In dispersed mass-tort settings involving exposures across different times, locations, and circumstances, each claimant’s exposure may constitute a separate occurrence even if the insured is accused of a single continuing omission (such as failure to warn).
- Aggregation into one occurrence is not available merely because the insured’s alleged wrongful conduct is continuous; the policy language and the causal event producing injury control the grouping of claims.
- Treating each exposure as a separate occurrence applies per-occurrence underlying limits separately and can prevent exhaustion needed to trigger excess layers, consistent with a layered program’s structure.

## Conclusion

The court interpreted “occurrence” to mean each asbestos claimant’s exposure to harmful conditions, not Metropolitan’s alleged continuous failure to warn, and therefore rejected claim aggregation that would have triggered excess coverage.


Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Aetna Cas. & Sur. Co., 765 A.2d 891 (Conn. 2001)