2025 Insurance Year in Review: Major California Insurance Coverage Decisions and What’s Ahead in 2026

Notwithstanding California’s reputation as being friendly to policyholders, 2025 was marked by multiple decisions favoring insurers. This included cases barring coverage for damages arising from molestation, “compensated carrying,” and “going and coming” to work. However, there were also several decisions favoring policyholders, including important cases finding coverage for smoke damage from wildfires, as well as a title insurance decision which strongly reaffirmed the breadth of the duty to defend.Join our insurance gurus and Past BHBA Presidents, who have been presenting BHBA's annual insurance program for more than a decade, for a deep discussion of those cases and others, and what they might suggest about the rights of insurers and policyholders in 2026 and beyond.