Background
Juliana Rodriguez Morel filed an administrative complaint in March 2019 alleging that her former employer, Mammoth Tech, Inc., discriminated and retaliated against her during her pregnancy. Mammoth received notice that month. After the New Hampshire Commission for Human Rights dismissed the complaint, the EEOC issued Rodriguez Morel a letter in October 2020 authorizing her to sue.
Rodriguez Morel sued Mammoth in January 2021 and obtained a March 2023 default judgment for $303,592.20 in back pay, damages, and attorney’s fees. She later sought a declaration that Travelers Casualty and Surety Company of America had to pay the judgment under Mammoth’s employment-practices liability endorsement, whose policy period ran from December 4, 2020, through August 5, 2021. The district court granted Travelers judgment on the pleadings because the 2021 suit was related to the pre-policy-period administrative complaint.
The Court’s Holding
The First Circuit affirmed. The policy’s generally applicable Related Claims provision treated all claims arising from related wrongful acts as a single claim made when the earliest related claim was made. Because the administrators did not dispute that the 2019 administrative complaint and the 2021 lawsuit arose from the same conduct, the lawsuit was deemed first made in 2019, before the employment-practices coverage period began.
The court rejected the argument that the later employment-practices endorsement superseded or conflicted with the Related Claims provision. The endorsement’s definition of an Employment Claim and the policy-wide Related Claims provision worked together: the endorsement identified qualifying claims, while the Related Claims provision determined the first-made date for related claims. The endorsement’s Prior and Pending Proceeding provisions also created an exclusion for losses tied to proceedings existing by December 4, 2015; they did not affirmatively confer coverage for every later proceeding or conflict with the related-claims rule.
Key Takeaways
- A policy-wide related-claims provision applied to employment claims even though the employment-practices endorsement did not repeat that provision.
- Related administrative and civil proceedings were treated as one claim made when Mammoth first received notice of the 2019 administrative complaint.
- A prior-and-pending-proceeding exclusion does not create coverage merely because a proceeding falls outside the exclusion’s stated cutoff date.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates how related-claims language can place a later lawsuit outside a claims-made policy period when an earlier administrative complaint concerning the same conduct preceded coverage. Courts applying New Hampshire law will read endorsements and the policy’s general terms together unless their provisions actually conflict.
Insured employers and claimants therefore cannot determine coverage solely from the filing date of a civil action. Earlier EEOC or state-agency proceedings may control when a related employment claim is deemed first made.