On December 2, 2025, a New York appeals court revived PrairieGold Solar’s Hurricane Maria claim, rejecting insurers’ reformation bid.
PrairieGold Solar LLC’s coverage fight with AGCS Marine Insurance Company is back on after the Appellate Division, First Department, unanimously reversed a trial court order that had granted summary judgment to the insurers and dismissed the complaint. The panel also denied the insurers’ effort to rewrite the contract through reformation, returning the dispute for further proceedings rather than ending it at the summary judgment stage.
At the heart of the case is damage from Hurricane Maria to PrairieGold’s Carmelo Productora facility in Puerto Rico. The policy, issued in September 2014, was an all-risk and business interruption program. It defined windstorm to include storms named by the National Weather Service or National Hurricane Center, and both sides agreed Hurricane Maria met that definition. The policy’s General Exclusions section listed 15 exclusions, but windstorm, hurricane, and natural catastrophe were not on that list. PrairieGold relied on those terms to argue that named storm losses were covered under the all-risk policy as written.
The insurers advanced a different theory: they argued the policy should be reformed because both sides supposedly understood natural catastrophe losses were outside the program, pointing to PrairieGold’s inquiry about buying additional NAT CAT coverage, which it did not purchase. The appellate court said that was not enough to change the written deal. Reformation requires clear and convincing evidence that both parties shared the same mistaken belief when the policy was executed. On this record, the court concluded the insurers’ own submissions raised factual disputes rather than resolving them.
Testimony in the record included PrairieGold’s view that named storms were covered, and an insurer’s employee acknowledged it was her impression that PrairieGold clearly thought it had named windstorm coverage. Even assuming the insurers had met their initial burden, the court found PrairieGold’s testimony – that it declined the more expensive NAT CAT add-on because it believed hurricanes were already covered and was only unconcerned about lesser storms addressed by the add-on – created triable issues requiring further fact-finding.
For the insurance market, the practical takeaway is that policy text – definitions and the exclusions schedule – can drive outcomes when catastrophe coverage is disputed. Attempts to retrofit exclusions through reformation face a demanding standard, particularly for commercial policies negotiated by sophisticated parties.
This is not a final decision on coverage, but it is a significant procedural development. The ruling removes the insurers’ shortcut to dismissal and puts the focus back on the policy’s language and what the parties understood when they bound coverage in 2014. For carriers, underwriters, and brokers, the decision is a reminder to align underwriting intent with the policy form, ensure definitions track the intended risk, and state any limits on catastrophe coverage clearly and expressly in the exclusions schedule.
The case now returns to the lower court for further proceedings, with the central questions – what the policy covers and what the parties intended – still to be decided.
