A Travelers unit is hauling a rival carrier into Rhode Island federal court, demanding it pick up the full tab for a slip-and-fall defense.
That, in essence, is the pitch behind a declaratory judgment action filed on May 8, 2026 by The Phoenix Insurance Company - a Travelers-affiliated insurer - against United Ohio Insurance Company in the US District Court for the District of Rhode Island. The fight is not about who pays the injured woman. It is about which insurer pays the lawyers defending the people she sued.
The backstory, as Phoenix tells it, is straightforward. Martha Germond, a 79-year-old Rhode Island resident, alleges she slipped on wet paint in the breezeway just outside her apartment at The Ledges at Johnston on May 27, 2022. Her injuries, according to the filing, were serious - she alleges a reverse total shoulder replacement and medical bills totaling $134,088.34. She sued the property owner, Johnston Groves LLC, and the property manager, The Dolben Company, Inc., in May 2025, then amended her suit the following month to add RCP Enterprises, LLC, the painting contractor hired to refresh 25 breezeway floors at the property.
That is where the insurance plumbing kicks in. Just weeks before the fall, according to Phoenix, Dolben, Johnston Groves and RCP signed a contract requiring RCP to carry $1 million in commercial general liability coverage and to name Dolben and Johnston Groves as additional insureds on a primary, non-contributory basis. RCP's Businessowners policy with United Ohio, Phoenix says, contains exactly the endorsements needed to deliver on that promise - including an additional insured endorsement triggered when bodily injury is "caused, in whole or in part, by RCP's acts or omissions" in its ongoing operations.
Phoenix argues the trigger has been pulled. The amended underlying complaint and Germond's own deposition testimony, Phoenix says, point to wet paint left behind by RCP's crew as the culprit. Layer in United Ohio's primary/non-contributory endorsement and Phoenix's own excess "other insurance" clause, the filing argues, and the two policies do not sit side by side - United Ohio sits on the bottom, alone.
United Ohio, through Ohio Mutual Insurance Group, has not seen it that way, according to the filing. Phoenix says the carrier first declined the tender in November 2023, then in November 2025 agreed to chip in under a reservation of rights - but only at a 50/50 split. Phoenix says no thanks, arguing a half-share offer ignores both the contract and the policy language.
For insurers and claims professionals, the dispute is a familiar one: how additional insured wording, primary/non-contributory endorsements and upstream indemnity contracts line up to decide who truly leads the defense - and how quickly a "let's just split it" compromise can unravel when the paperwork says otherwise.
The matter is in its earliest stage. The allegations have not been tested in court, United Ohio has not yet filed a response, and no court has ruled.
