Release Overview
- Litigation tracking for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), paraquat, and arsenic (including toxic baby food)
- Litigation tracking feature enhancements including Litagion agent-level summary statistics and multidistrict litigation filtering
- Scenario analysis feature enhancements including legacy aggregations and data export
- New emerging risk insight: "The Past, Present, and Future of PFAS Litigation in the United States"
Litigation Tracking Expansion
One year ago, we launched our litigation tracking feature in CoMeta to help casualty carriers navigate the flood of complaints filed against companies alleging negligence in exposing workers and consumers to COVID-19. As of this release, litigation tracking now covers mass litigation events centered on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), paraquat, and arsenic as well. We've added a total of 5,388 complaints to the tracker naming 266 companies conducting business in 150 industries going back to 1999. And we'll be updating these data (as well as data for COVID-19) every month.
For a quick overview of the Litigation tracking feature, please refer to the CoMeta release notes published here in June 2020. You might also be interested in this emerging risk insight piece that summarizes the history of PFAS litigation through the lens of the litigation tracking feature.
Litigation Tracking Feature Enhancements
Clicking on Litigation Tracking in the left-hand navigation bar, now takes you to the Litigation Tracking landing page summarizing complaints filed by Litagion agent (1). This page also allows you to filter the table by company to view a company's exposure to ongoing litigation events by Litagion agent (2).
Because so many mass litigation events are eventually consolidated in multidistrict litigation, we've added a new MDL filter (3) that lists all of the MDLs proposed or accepted that are centered on a given Litagion agent. For PFAS, for example, the filter lists three MDLs: DuPont C-8, Teflon pans, and AFFF. The C-8 MDL is winding down, the Teflon pan MDL was rejected in 2009, and the AFFF MDL is accelerating. Selecting an MDL filters the headline statistics and case table for complaints transferred (or proposed for transfer) to that MDL. Clicking View Details under the MDL filter opens a modal that provides summary information about the MDL and, when available, access to transfer motions and orders.
MDLs can contain thousands of cases. We typically provide full details (including access to the complaint itself) for a small subset of MDL cases. These selected cases can be quickly located by clicking on "Show only fully coded cases" (4).
We've made two changes to the headline statistics area as well. The headline statistics area now indicates how many complaints have been filed alleging bodily injury, property damage, and economic damage. You can also now filter the headline statistics and case table using available case tags (5) (e.g., "take-home COVID", "Chamber Works").
Scenario Analysis Feature Enhancements
In March of this year, we released CoMeta's new scenario analysis feature, introducing the ability to upload casualty portfolios in CoMeta and analyze aggregations of a range of emerging risk scenarios impacting both general liability and directors and officers lines of business. This release introduces two new capabilities: the ability to evaluate scenario aggregations for both in-force and legacy portfolios and the ability to download scenario reports.
Once you've uploaded a portfolio containing both in-force and expired policies using CoMeta's portfolio upload feature, simply select that portfolio in Scenario Analysis and then use the Policy Years filter (6) located in the top right-hand corner of the page to view results for all policies, in-force policies, or legacy policies.
Clicking "Download All Results" (7) will generate a zip file for you containing the data files you need to generate all of the results available for every scenario and scenario tabulation that generates losses within the selected portfolio. Please contact your account manager to learn more about how to work with these data files.
If you are interested in economy-wide scenario results, without regard to a portfolio, click "Scenarios" under Risk Profiles in the left-hand navigation bar. From the scenario landing page, you can click through to a scenario of interest and, next to the scenario documentation button, you will see a button for downloading a scenario report (8). The scenario report is downloaded as an Excel workbook containing all of the economy-wide, company, and industry loss data for every scenario tabulation.
