This property has a documented history as a property with a heating oil tank predating 1986. Historical insurance policies issued during those prior operations and through 1986 could fund a cleanup.

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 contamination here is consistently attributed to historical petroleum storage and a former heating oil UST whose operations predate 1986, the period when occurrence-based Commercial General Liability policies carried no effective pollution exclusion. A slow, subsurface release from buried heating oil infrastructure — discovered only through recent investigation, not any recent incident — is precisely the type of long-latency claim those policies were written to address. The investigation and remediation costs now facing the property owner, tied to a soil and groundwater cleanup integrated into redevelopment, could plausibly be funded by historical carriers whose policies were active when the contamination first originated.

Restorical's role is to locate viable historical policies, determine whether a successful coverage claim is possible, and assist our clients and their legal counsel to obtain insurance coverage. Restorical then manages the claim, including accounting, to ensure the cleanup is funded in a timely manner.