IN RE: ATLANTIC MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY (2022)

Order, Supreme Court, New York County (Carol Edmead, J.), entered September 16, 2021, which denied claimant's motion to reject a June 30, 2021 referee's decision finding that the New York Liquidation Bureau properly enforced the bar date that precluded consideration of claimant's insurance claim submitted in the liquidation of petitioner Atlantic Mutual Insurance Company, to modify the bar date to allow for the claim to be considered, and to direct the New York Liquidation Bureau to accept and process claimant's claim on the merits, unanimously affirmed, without costs.

The court properly denied claimant's motion to reject the referee's decision, which enforced the liquidation bar date against claimant's claim for funds from the Property/Casualty Insurance Security Fund for defense and indemnification of a tort action filed against it under New York's Child Victim Act (CVA). The CVA was adopted in 2019 to open a window reviving civil actions based on criminal cases involving certain sex offenses for which the statute of limitations had already run. Although claimant, in these circumstances, could not timely assert the coverage claim in the liquidation proceeding prior to the bar date, given the clear need for finality with respect to liquidation proceedings, the courts uniformly enforce bar dates (see e.g. Matter of Liquidation of Midland Ins. Co., 145 A.D.3d 601, 42 N.Y.S.3d 791 [1st Dept. 2016]). Moreover, because the legislature enacted CVA-related amendments to other statutes, but did not amend or express a legislative intent to alter the Insurance Law in this relevant respect, the lower court correctly found that no constitutional, equitable, or public policy considerations require or support an order modifying the bar dates to address this “hardship” to such insureds (see e.g. Matter of Professional Ins. Co. of N.Y. [Superintendent of Ins. of State of N.Y.], 67 A.D.2d 850, 413 N.Y.S.2d 17 [1st Dept. 1979], affd 49 N.Y.2d 716, 425 N.Y.S.2d 804, 402 N.E.2d 143 [1980]).