ORDINANCE OR LAW ENDORSEMENT DID NOT REQUIRE INSURER TO PAY FOR REMEDIATION OF CODE VIOLATIONS NOT RELATED TO THE COVERED DAMAGE.

The First Department, in a full-fledged opinion by Justice Saxe, determined a “Blanket Ordinance or Law Coverage Endorsement” did not cover remediation of below-code construction which was not related to the covered damage. Below-code structural concrete was discovered when covered water-related damage was being repaired. Because the below-code concrete was unrelated to the water damage, the “Law Coverage Endorsement” did not obligate the insurer to pay for remedtion of the concrete-work:

Here … the latent problem that was uncovered by inspection necessitated by the covered damage was not a problem related to the covered damage; rather, the inspection discovered a latent, unrelated problem with the building's infrastructure. The condition of the concrete slabs in plaintiff's building, which had to be repaired to bring the building into compliance with the Building Code, bore no relationship to the covered loss — the water damage … .

… The Ordinance or Law endorsement cannot be triggered simply by the discovery, in the course of an inspection necessitated by a covered event, of structural problems that amount to code violations. That is so whether the discovered condition could have been discerned earlier … or where, as here, it could not have been discovered absent the covered damage. St. George Tower v Insurance Co. of Greater N.Y., 2016 NY Slip Op 03100, 1st Dept 4-21-16