Court holds complete defense rule doesn’t apply to title insurance

Trial Notebook

By Steven P. Garmisa

Hoey & Farina

Posted November 7, 2022 11:13 AM

In for one, in for all. That sums up an insurance company’s typical duty to defend its insureds against all the claims in a lawsuit if one of the counts is covered by a liability policy. The question for the Illinois Appellate Court when two homeowners in Winnetka sued Chicago Title Insurance Co. was whether the “complete defense rule” applies to title policies.The underlying litigation involved a fight about an alleged ingress-egress easement running across beachfront property owned by James S. Findlay and Susan E. Small. …

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