A short timeline to make the unbelievable understandable: Rutherfoord client's employee working at the American Embassy in Mongolia had a life-threatening bleeding ulcer on a Saturday. He needed medical evacuation to a Hong Kong or Beijing hospital for transfusions (in lieu of tribal blood). The U.S. State Department contacted an emergency airlift outfit that insisted on confirming insurance coverage to pay for the flight before proceeding. The insured contacted a Rutherfoord international specialist on Monday, a holiday. She had five hours before the airport closed to coordinate confirmation of coverage or advance $64,000 to pay for evacuation. The banks were closed. The employee was bleeding to death. By the time she finished prodding the insurer and the airlift company, the employee had coverage, the flight was made, and a life was saved.
Contamination, on a deadline.
Often our clients want coverage for property they are purchasing. But one client needed it for property they were selling. The sale of a manufacturing facility was crucial to the client's financial survival, but the buyer's due diligence revealed contamination at the site. The seller could not reduce the sale price. The buyer would not assume the liabilities and wanted to cancel the sale. It looked like the whole deal was contaminated-until we came into the picture. Rutherfoord negotiated insurance coverage to cover our client's indemnification, keep liabilities off their balance sheet, and protect the buyer from future liabilities related to existing contamination. Easy enough. Except we also compressed a 60 to 90 day negotiation for the ten-year, $10 million coverage into two weeks. All in a day's work. Or, in this case, fourteen.
