The court case between Travelers Casualty and Surety of America and JELD-WEN Holding, Inc. continues its journey through the court system, most recently with JELD-WEN responding to Travelers’ cross-motion for summary judgment and adding their own motion to stay Travelers’ claim for declaratory relief.

In the documents, filed on Friday, March 11, JELD-WEN is requesting “that the Court deny or stay Travelers’ Cross-Motion relating to the Derivative Action and Records Demands because Travelers cannot demonstrate justiciable disputes as to those matters.” They are arguing that Travelers’ is unable to “show that it potentially has an actual or imminent duty to pay defense costs for the Derivative Action or the Records Demands” and that they haven’t asked Travelers to fund the defense of those claims in the first place. Instead, JELD-WEN, states, “The indemnity and defense costs for the Securities Claim exceed the limits of the underlying policies and the Travelers policy, triggering coverage under the layer of coverage immediately excess of Travelers’ layer,” and thus they—JELD-WEN, not Travelers—submitted defense costs for the Derivative Action or the Records Demands.

JELD-WEN lawyers also argue that “the question of whether Travelers has a duty to indemnify for the Derivative Action is not ripe.” They point to law in North Carolina requiring “the facts that give rise to liability” for a determination of such, contending that “Travelers would have this Court hold that there is no insurance in the 2019 tower for the Individual Insureds without the Court having all relevant facts available to it.”

Thus, JELD-WEN representation opines, “Travelers has not met its burden to demonstrate that a justiciable controversy exists with respect to its duty to pay defense costs or indemnity for the Derivative Action or Records Demands” and asks the court to deny Travelers’ cross-motion for summary judgment in its entirety.