Travelers won't have to cover a pregnancy-discrimination judgment topping $300,000 - because the claim behind it counted as "first made" before its policy even started.
On August 11, 2026, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed that Travelers Casualty and Surety Company of America does not owe a $303,592.20 judgment against its former policyholder, Mammoth Tech, Inc.
The dispute began in March 2019, when a former Mammoth employee filed an administrative complaint with the New Hampshire Commission for Human Rights and the EEOC. She said Mammoth discriminated against her based on sex and retaliated against her during her pregnancy. The commission notified Mammoth that same month.
In January 2021, she sued Mammoth in federal court over the same conduct. In March 2023, the court entered a default judgment and ordered Mammoth to pay $303,592.20 in back pay, damages, and attorney's fees.
In 2025, she turned to Travelers directly, later succeeded by the administrators of her estate. Mammoth had bought Employment Practices Liability (EPL) coverage from the insurer, and the estate asked a court to declare that Travelers had to pay.
The dispute turned on policy language. The EPL endorsement covered "any Employment Claim first made during the Policy Period," running from December 4, 2020, to August 5, 2021. But elsewhere, the Related Claims provision said "All Claims . . . for Related Wrongful Acts will be deemed to have been made at the time the first of such Claims . . . was made."
The 2019 complaint and the 2021 suit came from the same conduct. The estate did not dispute that the 2019 complaint was an Employment Claim, or that Mammoth knew about it before coverage began. So the later suit was treated as "first made" in 2019 - before the policy period.
The estate argued the endorsement overrode the Related Claims provision because the two clashed. The court disagreed. Under New Hampshire law, an endorsement wins out over the main policy only when they truly conflict, and here they did not. The provisions "easily work together," the court said.
The estate also pointed to the endorsement's Prior and Pending Proceeding exclusion and its December 4, 2015 date, arguing it created coverage. The court called that the "logical fallacy" of assuming the converse of a true statement must be true, noting the provision sits under a heading marked "EXCLUSIONS" and only removes coverage.
The First Circuit affirmed.
