Commentary on Fifth Circuit's decision in Tuepker v. State Farm

The Fifth Circuit, in an opinion released today in the appeal of Tuepker v. State Farm, reversed a lower court's ruling that State Farm's anti-concurrent cause language was ambiguous. The court also upheld State Farm's flood exclusion as applying to hurricane storm surge, and said that the anti-concurrent cause language in State Farm policies overturns a common law doctrine of property loss causation called "efficient proximate cause." Again, here is a copy of the decision. A huge win for State Farm, and a victory for clear, concise writing and reasoning without the court's saying more than it needed to, as another panel of the Fifth Circuit did in the recent appeal in Leonard v. Nationwide. As regular readers know, I recently wrote a long article for the New Appleman