When Hollywood shut down due to COVID-19 restrictions, Disney filed claims with their insurance company Fireman’s Fund. Now the insurer is suing Disney, saying that they were taking advantage of the situation. The insurance company alleges that the Mouse House filed claims for downtime that was not mandated.

From The Wrap…

In the lawsuit, Fireman’s Fund Insurance says it does not dispute the claims related to the early months of the pandemic, known as “first wave claims,” are covered under “Civil Authority Coverage. But the two sides cannot agree on what Fireman’s calls “second wave claims” and “holiday hiatus” claims.

Fireman’s explains “second wave claims” as follows: “An example of a typical Second Wave Claim would be a non-essential crew member testing positive for COVID-19. Production would be able to continue without this person but for the fact that he or she has had face-to-face contact with the director. Having been exposed, the director is required to quarantine for 14 days, causing production to shut down, even if he or she never tests positive or becomes ill.”

Another example of disputed claims include Disney shutting down for an additional 1-2 weeks before the holidays because “public health authorities in Los Angeles, Atlanta and London expressed ‘elevated concern’ during the 2020-2021 holidays about then-spiking COVID-19 levels.”

Disney has claimed the amount at dispute is at $10 million.

It could be that Disney was being overly cautious and simply misunderstood what they were and weren’t allowed to claim… or they could be using the pandemic to claw back some of their lost revenue from their insurer.

Either way, it’s likely that there will be more of these kinds of “disagreements” from other studios in the future.

[Source: The Wrap]