Crum & Forster wants a Texas court to declare it owes Clayton Homes no defense in a trailer-wheel injury lawsuit.
The insurer filed an original complaint for declaratory judgment on August 17, 2026, in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas. It is asking a judge to rule that it has no duty to defend or indemnify CMH Manufacturing, Inc. - which does business as Clayton Homes - as an additional insured.
The coverage question grows out of a crash described in a separate Oklahoma lawsuit. According to that underlying complaint, on December 5, 2023, a driver was working an "escort vehicle," following a tractor-trailer that was hauling a mobile home unit owned or maintained by Clayton. Oklahoma rules classified the load as oversized and required an escort. The filing alleges that at highway speed, a tire and wheel came off the trailer and struck the escort driver's car, totaling it and causing what the complaint calls "substantial bodily injury."
That underlying suit accuses Clayton of negligence for allegedly failing to maintain or inspect the trailer, and of being "negligent and/or grossly negligent" in hiring the truck driver and trucking company. It also brings products-liability claims over the wheels and axles against Lone Star Wheel Components and another components supplier.
Crum & Forster's connection runs through Lone Star. The insurer issued Lone Star a commercial general liability policy - No. GLO-100322 - with a $1 million each-occurrence limit, running from October 5, 2023, to October 5, 2024. Clayton is not a named insured on it.
The policy does include a vendor endorsement that can extend coverage to outside businesses. By its terms, though, it reaches only "bodily injury" or "property damage" arising out of "your products" that are "distributed or sold in the regular course of the vendor's business."
According to the complaint, Clayton asked to be defended under the policy on or about December 16, 2025. Crum & Forster says it responded on March 2, 2026, telling Clayton it did not qualify under the vendor endorsement and that certain exclusions barred coverage. Clayton's lawyers then renewed the request.
The insurer's main argument is that the underlying complaint never claims Clayton sells or distributes Lone Star's products "in the regular course of" its own business - the condition the endorsement requires. It offers two fallbacks: that Lone Star's parts were used as part of another thing, the mobile home trailer, and that no one has established whether the wheel or axle that allegedly struck the escort driver even came from Lone Star rather than another supplier.
Crum & Forster also argues that the same reasons it owes no defense mean it can never owe indemnity.
These are allegations and contentions set out in court filings, and no court has ruled on whether Crum & Forster owes it a defense or indemnity. The underlying negligence and products-liability claims also remain unproven.
