This property has a documented history as a gasoline service station going back to 1963. Historical insurance policies issued during those prior operations and through 1986 could recover the cleanup costs already paid.
Johnny's Food Center in Des Moines sits downgradient from two adjacent properties — a former service station whose underground storage tank was removed in 1988 and a car wash site whose seven USTs were removed in 1992 — and petroleum contamination from those facilities migrated onto the property through soil and groundwater. A multi-year cleanup project running from 1995 to 2012 addressed the affected soil and groundwater through independent remediation efforts tied to the adjacent UST removals, ultimately resulting in a No Further Action determination from Ecology. That history could support an insurance cost recovery claim against carriers who issued insurance policies 40+ years ago.
Why Historical Insurance Policies May Be Accessible
Pre-1986 Commercial General Liability (CGL) policies were occurrence-based and did not contain an effective pollution exclusion in Washington. If contamination occurred while those policies were active, those historical insurance carriers may still have a legal obligation to fund the cleanup costs, even if the business closed or the property changed hands.
The petroleum releases that contaminated this property originated from underground storage tanks installed as early as the 1960s at the neighboring service station and car wash — well within the era when occurrence-based Commercial General Liability policies carried no effective pollution exclusion. The remediation expenditures spanning nearly two decades of investigation and cleanup work were incurred to address contamination whose origin predates 1986. Historical carriers who wrote CGL policies covering the adjacent operators during that window may still be obligated to recover those documented cleanup costs.
Restorical's role is to locate viable historical policies, determine whether a successful cost recovery claim is possible, and assist our clients and their legal counsel to obtain insurance coverage for costs already incurred. Restorical's forensic accounting team works to re-establish and document past cleanup expenditures, ensuring the strongest possible basis for recovery.
Recovering Costs from an Older Cleanup
If this site reached No Further Action years ago, the original cleanup expenditures may be difficult to reconstruct. Restorical's forensic accounting team specializes in re-establishing and documenting past cleanup costs — even decades later — to build the strongest possible basis for an insurance recovery claim.
What We Look For
- Historical insurance policies (pre-1986)
- Policy numbers, carrier names, and coverage periods
- Connection between contamination timing and policy period
- Evidence linking cleanup obligation to insured activity
What We Deliver
- Historical Coverage Chart
- Trigger Analysis & Property/Policy Nexus
- Coverage strategy with recommendations
- Insurance funding for your remediation
- Claims Management & Forensic Accounting
The Restorical Proven Process
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Contact UsThis analysis is preliminary and based on publicly available records. Restorical Research is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice.