Insurer avoids $300,000 pregnancy discrimination payout over claim timing

The commission dismissed the complaint in October 2020. The EEOC then sent the employee a letter authorizing her to sue. She filed suit in federal court in January 2021 over the same treatment, and in March 2023 the court entered a default judgment against the company, ordering it to pay $303,592.20 in back pay, damages, and attorney’s fees. 

The employee – and later the administrators of her estate, after she died – then pursued the company’s insurer to collect. Mammoth had bought Employment Practices Liability (EPL) coverage from Travelers to cover losses from wrongful employment practices. The policy period ran from December 4, 2020, to August 5, 2021. 

The coverage turned on timing. The policy applied to claims “first made” during the policy period. The 2021 lawsuit fell inside that window, but the 2019 EEOC charge, covering the same conduct, did not. Under a “Related Claims” provision, claims for “Related Wrongful Acts” count as a single claim, deemed made when the first of them was made. That set the effective date at 2019, before coverage began. 

The estate argued that the EPL endorsement overrode the Related Claims provision. The court disagreed, holding that the two provisions worked together rather than in conflict, and affirmed the judgment on the pleadings. 

The decision did not test the discrimination allegations themselves; the underlying $303,592.20 award was a default judgment. What the appeal turned on was coverage. Where an EEOC charge or agency complaint predates an EPL policy, a later lawsuit over the same conduct may fall outside coverage under related-claims language, even when the suit itself is filed during the policy period.