All Insurers Pay.

The California Supreme Court considered questions of insurance coverage in connection with a federal court-ordered cleanup of the Stringfellow Acid Pits waste site. The opinion reaffirmed “the ‘continuous injury’ trigger of coverage,” as that principle was explained in Montrose Chemical Corp. v. Admiral Ins. Co. (1995) 10 Cal.4th 645, 655, [913 P.2d 878; 42 Cal.Rptr.2d 324] (Montrose) and the “all sums” rule adopted in Aerojet-General Corp. v. Transport Indemnity Co. (1997) 17 Cal.4th 38, 55-57, [948 P.2d 909; 70 Cal.Rptr.2d 118] (Aerojet), and conclude[d] that the principles announced in those cases apply to the insurers’ indemnity obligations in this case, so long as the insurers insured the subject property at some point in time during the loss itself.”  The court concluded “the all sums approach to insurance indemnity allocation applies to the State’s successive property or long-tail first property loss” and “allocation of the cost of indemnification . . . should be determined with stacking.”  State of California v. Continental Ins. Co., (Cal. Supreme Ct.; August 9, 2012) 55 Cal.4th 186.