Valley Forge Insurance Company v. Hartford Iron & Metal Inc et al

Filing 504

OPINION AND ORDER GRANTING the following: 336 Motion to Dismiss for Failure to State a Claim; 338 Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Jurisdiction; 340 Motion to Dismiss; 352 Motion to Dismiss for Failure to State a Claim; 356 Motion to Dismis s; 360 Motion to Dismiss for Failure to State a Claim; Hartford Iron's amended counterclaims and third party claims 264 are DISMISSED with leave to amend as to the counterclaims against Valley Forge but without leave to amend as to all oth er third party defendants. FINDING AS MOOT the following: 273 Motion to Sever; 454 Motion for Partial Summary Judgment; 474 Rule 12(f) Motion to Strike; 486 Rule 56 Motion to Strike and 488 Motion to Compel. Signed by Judge Robert L Miller, Jr on 8/19/2016. (lhc) Modified on 8/19/2016 (lhc).

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
NORTHERN DISTRICT OF INDIANA
FORT WAYNE DIVISION
VALLEY FORGE INSURANCE
COMPANY,

)
)
)
PLAINTIFF,
)
)
VS.
)
)
HARTFORD IRON & METAL, INC.,
)
ET AL.,
)
)
DEFENDANTS.
)
______________________________________ )
HARTFORD IRON & METAL, INC.,
)
ET AL.,
)
)
THIRD-PARTY PLAINTIFFS,
)
)
VS.
)
)
CONTINENTAL INSURANCE CO.,
)
ET. AL,
)
THIRD-PARTY DEFENDANTS
)

CAUSE NO. 1:14-CV-6-RLM-SLC

OPINION and ORDER
Counterclaim defendant Valley Forge Insurance Company and several
third-party defendants all move to dismiss Hartford Iron’s claims against them.
Because Hartford Iron’s third-party complaint doesn’t adequately put the
opposing parties on notice of Hartford Iron’s claims and their factual basis, the
court grants the motions and dismisses Hartford Iron’s amended counterclaims
and third party complaint.

I. BACKGROUND

The factual background of this dispute is very complicated and known to
the parties, and no detailed factual summary is necessary for purposes of the
motions

to

dismiss.

Hartford

Iron’s

scrapyard

developed

a

series

of

environmental problems, including rain water picking up chemicals from the
scrap yard soil and flowing off the property as contaminated stormwater. The
Indiana Department of Environmental Management and the EPA brought
enforcement actions to make Hartford Iron pay penalties and remediate the site,
and Hartford Iron sought coverage from its liability insurer, Valley Forge.
Disputes arose between insurer and insured, but eventually Hartford Iron and
Valley Forge entered into a settlement agreement obligating Valley Forge to pay
for the remediation of the site and to defend Hartford Iron in the agency
enforcement actions.
Valley Forge hired Resolute to act as a third-party administrator to manage
the insurance claims and August Mack, Environmental Field Services, and
James A. Berndt as environmental contractors to remediate the site. The
remediation has been fraught with problems and has spawned a variety of
conflicts; the environmental regulators continue to impose fines and penalties
for ongoing noncompliance, and Hartford Iron and Valley Forge blame each other
for the continued problems. In general, Valley Forge believes that Hartford Iron’s
refusal to cooperate with the environmental contractors has prevented effective
remediation; Hartford Iron believes the remediation plan thus far has been inept,

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and accuses Valley Forge of trying to pin the blame for the runaway costs solely
on Hartford Iron.
Valley Forge sued Hartford Iron for breach of contract and sought
declaratory judgment about its obligations under the settlement agreement.
Hartford Iron filed counterclaims against Valley Forge and third-party claims
against Resolute, the environmental contractors, and several other insurance
companies with no direct role in the remediation dispute. All of the counterclaim
defendants and third-party defendants moved to dismiss Hartford Iron’s claims.
Before the court ruled on the motions to dismiss, Hartford Iron amended its
third-party complaint and counterclaims, rendering the motions moot.
Hartford Iron’s amended complaint1 brings counterclaims against Valley
Forge and third party claims against 15 other entities. The third party defendants
fall into five major categories: other insurance companies affiliated with Valley
Forge through its parent, insurance and financial conglomerate CNA (“the CNA
parties”); non-CNA insurance companies that have issued primary insurance
policies to Hartford Iron (“primary insurers”); non-CNA insurance companies
that issued excess insurance policies to Hartford Iron (“excess insurers”); the
environmental contractors responsible for the remediation efforts so far; and

Technically, the pleading at issue is Hartford Iron’s First Amended Counterclaims and
Third-Party Complaint. Because referring to it by this title would be unduly cumbersome
and because Valley Forge’s original complaint isn’t at issue, the court refers to Hartford
Iron’s pleading simply as “the complaint” for convenience.

1

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Resolute, the claims administration company working with Valley Forge to
manage the claims process.
The complaint sparked a total of eight motions to dismiss filed by various
combinations of counterclaim defendants and third party defendants. The court
granted the two motions by the environmental contractors and Resolute, so only
the CNA parties, primary insurers, and excess insurers remain as third party
defendants.

II. STANDARD OF REVIEW

All of the third party defendants move to dismiss for failure to state a claim
under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). To state a claim, a complaint need
only contain a short and plain statement showing that the plaintiff is entitled to
relief. See EEOC v. Concentra Health Servs., Inc., 496 F.3d 773, 776 (7th Cir.
2007). When ruling on a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, the court must accept as true all
well-pleaded factual allegations in the complaint and draw all reasonable
inferences in favor of the non-moving party. See Hecker v. Deere & Co., 556 F.3d
575, 580 (7th Cir. 2009). However, facts included in documents that are attached
to the complaint or incorporated to it by reference may defeat contrary
allegations in the complaint. See Wright v. Assoc. Ins. Cos., Inc., 29 F.3d 1244,
1248 (7th Cir. 1994).
A complaint may survive a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) if it
contains sufficient factual allegations to “state a claim to relief that is plausible
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on its face.” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007). “A claim has
facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court
to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct
alleged.”

Adams v. City of Indianapolis, 742 F.3d 720, 728 (7th Cir. 2014)

(quoting Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009)). “Specific facts are not
necessary; the statement need only give the defendant fair notice of what
the…claim is and the grounds upon which it rests.” Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S.
89, 93 (2007) (ellipsis in original). Nonetheless, “bare legal conclusions” need not
be accepted as true even if alleged as facts, and a “formulaic recitation of a cause
of action’s elements will not do.” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 547.

III. DISCUSSION

Several of the third party defendants move to dismiss Hartford Iron’s
counterclaims for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under Federal Rule of Civil
Procedure 12(b)(1). They point out that complete diversity was originally lacking,
because Hartford Iron is a citizen of Indiana and so are third party defendants
August Mack, James Berndt, and Environmental Field Services. The court
needn’t reach these arguments, because the three nondiverse third party
defendants have already been separately dismissed; none of the remaining third
party defendants shares Hartford Iron’s Indiana citizenship, so the court’s
diversity jurisdiction is secure.
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The six remaining motions are made by: (1) the CNA parties (Valley Forge,
Continental Casualty Company, National Fire Insurance Company of Hartford,
and Continental Insurance Company); (2) Cincinnati Insurance Company; (3)
Western World Insurance Company; (4) National Surety Corporation; (5) Ace
Property and Casualty Insurance Company; and (6) Granite State Insurance
Company, Illinois National Insurance Company, and New Hampshire Insurance
Company.2 Each motion raises issues relating to Hartford Iron’s specific claims,
but five of the six motions to dismiss also attack the complaint as a whole. These
motions invoke Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 8, arguing that Hartford Iron’s
complaint is simply too long, too complicated, and too generally inscrutable to
adequately put the third party defendants on notice of the claims against them.
The court considered this issue in ruling on the other two motions to
dismiss, but declined to decide whether the complaint violated Rule 8 because
Hartford Iron’s claims against the environmental contractors and Resolute could
be dismissed with prejudice for other reasons.3 At this stage, however, it is no
longer possible to evaluate the legal sufficiency of Hartford Iron’s claims without

One third party defendant, Employers Insurance Company of Wausau, hasn’t moved
to dismiss.
3 In ruling on Resolute’s motion to dismiss, the court recognized that the length and
complexity alone of Hartford Iron’s complaint probably warranted dismissal, calling the
complaint “byzantine” and noting that it “swamps the reader with excruciating detail of
dealings” and then “glides into conclusory claims.” The court nonetheless decided that
“rather than dismiss the amended complaint on these grounds, which would entail
telling Hartford Iron to go back to the drawing board from which this amended complaint
already was taken, it’s preferable to address the merits of Resolute’s arguments as to
each claim against it.”
2

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deciding whether the complaint is so unreadable that it must be dismissed in its
entirety.
The first and most glaring problem with the complaint is its sheer length.
Rule 8 mandates “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the
pleader is entitled to relief,” and no one could call Hartford Iron’s complaint short
nor plain. “Prolixity is a bane of the legal profession but a poor ground for
rejecting potentially meritorious claims. Fat in a complaint can be ignored,
confusion or ambiguity dealt with by means other than dismissal.” Bennett v.
Schmidt, 153 F.3d 516, 518 (7th Cir. 1998). Excessive length alone “ordinarily
does not justify the dismissal of an otherwise valid complaint,” Stanard v.
Nygren, 658 F.3d 792, 797 (7th Cir. 2011), so a complaint that violates Rule 8
because of its length but nonetheless puts the defendant and the court on notice
of the plaintiff’s claims shouldn’t be dismissed “merely because of the presence
of superfluous matter.” Davis v. Ruby Foods, Inc., 269 F.3d 818, 820 (7th Cir.
2001).
Nonetheless, “[t]o the principle that the mere presence of extraneous
matter does not warrant dismissal of a complaint under Rule 8, as to most
generalizations about the law, there are exceptions.” Davis v. Ruby Foods, Inc.,
269 F.3d 818, 821 (7th Cir. 2001). Dismissal is appropriate – and necessary –
when a complaint’s length is so excessive as to not only inconvenience or annoy,
but to impair its intelligibility. Excessive length “may make a complaint
unintelligible, by scattering and concealing in a morass of irrelevancies the few
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allegations that matter.” United States ex rel. Garst v. Lockheed–Martin Corp.,
328 F.3d 374, 378 (7th Cir. 2003). Where the amount of extraneous detail
swamps the relevant allegations in the complaint, it becomes unduly
burdensome for the opposing party and the court to understand the plaintiff’s
claims. See Vicom, Inc. v. Harbridge Merchant Servs., Inc., 20 F.3d 771, 775776 (7th Cir. 1994) (“A complaint that is prolix and/or confusing makes it
difficult for the defendant to file a responsive pleading and makes it difficult for
the trial court to conduct orderly litigation.”); Jennings v. Emry, 910 F.2d 1434,
1436 (7th Cir. 1990) (noting that a complaint must “be presented with sufficient
clarity to avoid requiring a district court or opposing party to forever sift through
its pages in search of” the plaintiff’s claims). Accordingly, “[w]ordy, redundant,
and seemingly interminable complaints violate the letter and the spirit of Rule 8
and may be dismissed with leave to refile.” Fender v. Sailors, No. 4:14-CV-024,
2015 WL 1510195, at *2 (N.D. Ind. Mar. 31, 2015).
Hartford Iron’s complaint is not merely wordy, it is so verbose as to be
unreadable. The complaint spans 170 pages (not including exhibits), brings 25
counts against varying combinations of third party defendants, and includes
nearly 891 numbered paragraphs – many of which are comprised of multiple
lettered subparagraphs. Courts in both this circuit and others have dismissed
similar – and in many cases, much shorter – complaints. See, e.g., U.S. ex rel.
Garst v. Lockheed-Martin Corp., 328 F.3d 374, 378–379 (7th Cir. 2003)
(affirming

dismissal

of

155-page,

400-paragraph
-8-

complaint

the

court

characterized as “pestilential”); Jennings v. Emry, 910 F.2d 1434, 1441 (7th Cir.
1990) (describing 55-page, 433-paragraph complaint as “the apogee of pleading
by obfuscation”); Fender v. Sailors, No. 4:14-CV-024, 2015 WL 1510195, at *1
(N.D. Ind. Mar. 31, 2015) (striking complaint that incorporated by reference “over
sixty pages”); In re Westinghouse Securities Litigation, 90 F.3d 696, 702–703 (3d
Cir. 1996) (affirming dismissal of 240-page, 600-paragraph complaint as
“unnecessarily complicated and verbose”); McHenry v. Renne, 84 F.3d 1172,
1179-1180 (9th Cir. 1996) (affirming district court’s dismissal of 53-page, 150paragraph third amended complaint); Kuehl v. FDIC, 8 F.3d 905, 908–909 (1st
Cir. 1993) (affirming dismissal of 43-page, 358-paragraph complaint); Michaelis
v. Nebraska State Bar Association, 717 F.2d 437, 439 (8th Cir. 1983) (affirming
dismissal of 98-page, 144-paragraph complaint that would have “made an
orderly trial impossible”).
There may well be valid claims buried in Hartford Iron’s mountain of
allegations, but the sheer length of the complaint makes unearthing them
unduly burdensome. Factual allegations aren’t segregated by which claim they
apply to; each count of the complaint begins by saying that “[e]ach of the
paragraphs above and in subsequent counts is incorporated herein.”
Accordingly, when a defendant (or the court) wants to know what facts underlie
a particular legal claim, it must sift through all 891 paragraphs to see if any of
them allege facts that could arguably be relevant to that claim. “To form a
defense, a defendant must know what he is defending against; that is, he must
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know the legal wrongs he is alleged to have committed and the factual allegations
that form the core of the claims asserted against him. Deciphering even that
much from [Hartford Iron’s] amended complaint is next to impossible.” Stanard
v. Nygren, 658 F.3d 792, 799–800 (7th Cir. 2011).
Count 24,4 for example, alleges that the CNA parties and August Mack
breached a duty of good faith and/or a fiduciary duty to Hartford Iron, but
includes only vague, general accusations of what precisely constituted such a
breach – leaving it up to the third party defendants and the court to hunt through
the entire rest of the complaint to figure out what Hartford Iron means when it
says, for example, that CNA breached a duty by trying “to shift blame and
regulatory liability onto Hartford Iron.” This kitchen sink approach “leads to
essentially nothing being alleged” because when any relevant allegations
supporting a claim are hidden elsewhere in a mass of factual detail “the needle
in the haystack might as well not be there.” Old Time Enterprises, Inc. v. Int'l
Coffee Corp., 862 F.2d 1213, 1220 (5th Cir. 1989). “Rule 8(a) requires parties to
make their pleadings straightforward, so that judges and adverse parties need
not try to fish a gold coin from a bucket of mud.” See United States ex rel. Garst
v. Lockheed–Martin Corp., 328 F.3d 374, 378 (7th Cir. 2003). At 170 pages,
Hartford Iron’s complaint is less a bucket of mud than a swimming pool of it.
Requiring the court and the third party defendants to identify which of the nearly

4

One of the two Count 24s, anyway.

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900 paragraphs could support each count imposes far more of a burden than
the Federal Rules permit.
Even if the opposing parties and the court were willing to engage in such
a maddening scavenger hunt, everyone involved would have to create flowcharts
and outlines to be reasonably sure of who is being sued for what, increasing the
risk of oversights or misunderstandings that impair the orderly administration
of the case up through trial. This isn’t merely a hypothetical danger here; the
length and complexity of the complaint has already injected unnecessary
confusion into the proceedings. The complaint lists two separate and unrelated
claims against different groups of parties as “Count 24,” suggesting that the
pleading is so unwieldy that Hartford Iron itself can’t keep its claims straight.
This created no small amount of confusion when Resolute moved to dismiss
“Count 24” apparently without realizing that there were two of them. Similarly,
in places a literal reading of Hartford Iron’s complaint produces illogical results
seemingly because the drafter got confused about to which of the many groups
of defendants he assigned various entities. Count 22, for example, accuses
Resolute of tortious interference with Hartford Iron’s relationship with “CNA”
despite an earlier portion of the complaint defining “CNA” to include Resolute.
Read literally, Hartford Iron is accusing Resolute of interfering with itself. If
Hartford Iron’s own attorneys can’t keep straight its claims and grouping system,
there’s little hope for the third-party defendants – and even less for the twelve

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unfortunate laymen asked to resolve all these claims if and when this case ever
proceeds to a jury trial.
If confusing length were the sole problem with Hartford Iron’s complaint,
the court would still hesitate to resort to dismissal. Dismissing the entire
complaint is a drastic measure, as it will not only further delay the ultimate
resolution of this case but will also moot several other pending motions. The
court is respectful of the time spent by attorneys on both sides, and doesn’t take
such a step lightly. But Hartford Iron seriously compounds the complaint’s
length problem by inadequately distinguishing between the various third party
defendants.
The complaint lumps together sets of parties into defined groups of its own
making. “CNA” includes Valley Forge, three other insurance companies, and
Resolute, while “AIG” includes three different insurance companies. These
groups are then further combined into larger groups, notably “Primary Insurers”
and “Excess Insurers.” Having established these definitions, the complaint then
attributes conduct, communications, and liability to, for example, “CNA” or
“Primary Insurers” as a group – ignoring the fact that these groups contain many
distinct entities who typically can’t all be responsible for the particular act or
statement alleged. This unavoidably leaves each individual third party defendant
at a loss to figure out what actual conduct Hartford Iron accuses it of. See Specht
v. Google, Inc., 660 F. Supp. 2d 858, 865 (N.D. Ill. 2009) (dismissing claims
against a group of corporate defendants where the plaintiffs “treat[ed] the
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numerous Defendants (other than Google) as a collective whole and [didn’t]
identify any specific act of infringement by any single Defendant or any service
rendered or product provided by any single Defendant.”).
Almost every count includes allegations about “CNA,” but CNA is no less
than five entities. When Hartford Iron says that “Hartford Iron’s chosen defense
counsel wrote to CNA,” for example, it isn’t clear which of the five entities
Hartford Iron actually communicated with. The five aren’t a hive mind; they are
(aside from Resolute) insurance companies that share a parent conglomerate but
are otherwise distinct entities with their own corporate existence. Breach of a
settlement agreement is the heart of Hartford Iron’s claims, and that settlement
agreement was solely between Hartford Iron and Valley Forge. The fact that
Valley Forge’s parent corporation own several other insurance companies doesn’t
make those companies liable for everything Valley Forge says or does. Like the
plaintiffs in Specht, Hartford Iron’s “conclusory legal claims against unspecified
Defendants fall short of the requirement that a complaint cite supporting facts
in order to survive a motion to dismiss.” Id. at 865.
The complaint is even less clear in its allegations against the primary
insurers and excess insurers. The “excess insurers” are defined and introduced
as parties, and the “prayer for relief” section of the complaint mentions that
Hartford Iron wants these insurers to pay into an escrow fund and wants
declaratory relief related to the alleged excess insurance policies. But nowhere
else in the complaint’s 170 pages are any of the excess insurers mentioned at
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all, either individually or as a group. None of the 25 counts even purports to
apply to them, as every substantive claim opens with a statement that it is
brought solely against some combination of CNA, the environmental contractors,
Resolute, and the primary insurers. Because Hartford Iron’s complaint makes
no factual allegations against the excess insurers whatsoever, it can’t adequately
put them on notice of the basis of Hartford Iron’s claims against them.
The primary insurers are at least named in some counts, but the
complaint’s factual allegations about them are similarly absent. The complaint
introduces the primary insurers and states a date each one allegedly “received
notice of claim.” But the primary insurers are never mentioned again, aside from
conclusory legal boilerplate. Each count of the complaint follows a similar
pattern: Hartford Iron makes voluminous, detailed factual allegations about
things that “CNA” did, said, or failed to do, then concludes with a bare recitation
that the other primary insurers “contributed to the breaches in this Count by
failing to provide any defense, assistance, or cooperation.” Like the excess
insurers, the primary insurers are left understandably mystified as to why they
are being dragged into Hartford Iron’s dispute with Valley Forge at all.
Accordingly, Hartford Iron’s complaint must be dismissed in its entirety
because it doesn’t give any of the third party defendants adequate notice of
Hartford Iron’s claims and their factual basis. Typically, dismissal of a complaint
under Rule 8 is with leave to amend; because such a dismissal identifies a
deficiency in the form of the pleading rather than a legal defect in the claims, a
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party can often cure the problem by filing a shorter and plainer amended
complaint.
This is in some ways a special case, however. Hartford Iron’s original third
party complaint was already a titanic 134 pages, and the flurry of motions to
dismiss it provoked all complained that Hartford Iron’s pleading was “prolix,”
“unclear” and “confusing.” Rather than amend the complaint to cure the obvious
problems the third party defendants pointed out, Hartford Iron chose to double
down by filing an amended complaint that was even longer and more inscrutable.
Hartford Iron had two chances to state its claims clearly, and – even after the
third party defendants went to the time and trouble of pointing out the
deficiencies – didn’t do so. In light of the considerable trouble and expense
Hartford Iron has already imposed on the third party defendants by forcing them
to sift through two 130+ page complaints and move to dismiss twice, this is a
situation in which leave to amend isn’t necessarily appropriate. Nonetheless,
because Hartford Iron does allege concrete facts regarding Valley Forge, the court
grants Hartford Iron leave to file an amended countercomplaint that includes a
short and plain statement of its claims against Valley Forge only.
Leave to amend is not appropriate as to any of the third party defendants.
All the remaining third party defendants are insurance companies, and Hartford
Iron essentially seeks a judicial ruling that those companies – not Hartford Iron
– will have to bear any eventual costs not covered by Valley Forge. But as already
noted, the complaint includes no non-conclusory factual allegations as to any of
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the primary or excess insurers. To plead a claim under an insurance contract, a
party must identify the terms of the policy that was allegedly breached. See Palda
v. General Dynamics Corp., 47 F.3d 872, 874-875 (7th Cir. 1995). Hartford Iron’s
complaint itself doesn’t give any details about the alleged primary or excess
insurance policies on which it bases its claims against the non-CNA parties.
Instead, Hartford Iron attaches as exhibits to its complaint a policy it claims to
include “representative” policy terms and tables listing policy dates and numbers
of one policy from each of the insurers. But the end dates of all the insurance
policies listed on the table are between 1987 and 2007 – while all the allegations
in the complaint concern events between 2010 and 2014. Far from supporting
Hartford Iron’s claims against the insurance companies, the exhibits attached to
the complaint appear to doom them; Hartford Iron has only pled that it once had
insurance policies with the companies at issue, but the policies expired long
before the events at issue here. Moreover, the complaint states that the non-CNA
insurance companies received notice of claim between March 2012 and
November 2015 – in other words, after Valley Forge had entered into a settlement
agreement obligating it to pay in full for the entire remediation and defense. It
isn’t clear what Hartford Iron believes the other insurance companies should
have done, as the costs underlying Hartford Iron’s policy claims were already
being fully borne by Valley Forge.
At heart, this is a dispute between Valley Forge and Hartford Iron
regarding who is at fault for the sorry state of remediation efforts at Hartford
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Iron’s scrapyard. Valley Forge settled an earlier legal dispute with Hartford Iron
by agreeing to fully fund the remediation and defense as to the original
environmental contamination, and has for years been attempting to do so.
Hartford Iron simply hasn’t provided any reason to drag unrelated insurance
companies into the dispute while Valley Forge is still paying for the necessary
remediation and there is no indication that it will imminently stop doing so.
Hartford Iron appears to feel that because the other insurance companies didn’t
step in and do something Valley Forge had already agreed to do, they are a cause
in fact of all the problems and delays that arise out of Valley Forge’s efforts. Yet
despite having two opportunities to state a claim against these other insurance
companies, Hartford Iron hasn’t even adequately alleged the existence of an
insurance relationship between itself and any of those companies – and it can
muster only vague, conclusory accusations about breaches of unspecified duties
of good faith in support of its theory that the other insurers should pay. While
Hartford Iron could conceivably have valid claims against these companies if and
when Valley Forge reaches its policy limits and ceases funding the remediation
and defense, Hartford Iron admits that this hasn’t happened yet. Accordingly,
Hartford Iron’s claims against the other insurance companies aren’t ripe, and
granting leave to amend such claims would be futile.

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IV. CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, the court GRANTS Cincinnati’s motion to
dismiss (Doc. No. 336), Western World’s motion to dismiss (Doc. No. 338),
National Surety’s motion to dismiss (Doc. No. 340), Ace Property’s motion to
dismiss (Doc. No. 352), the AIG parties’ motion to dismiss (Doc. No. 356), and
the CNA parties’ motion to dismiss (Doc. No. 360). Hartford Iron’s amended
counterclaims and third party claims (Doc. No. 264) are DISMISSED with leave
to amend as to the counterclaims against Valley Forge but without leave to
amend as to all other third party defendants.
The following motions are MOOTED by the dismissal of Hartford Iron’s
complaint:

the CNA parties’ motion to sever (Doc No. 273); Hartford Iron’s

motion for partial summary judgment (Doc. No. 454); the CNA parties’ motion to
strike Hartford Iron’s brief in support of summary judgment (Doc. No. 474);
Hartford Iron’s motion to strike the CNA parties’ response to the summary
judgment motion (Doc. No. 486); and the AIG parties’ motion to compel Rule 26
initial disclosures (Doc. No. 488).
SO ORDERED.
ENTERED: August 19, 2016

/s/ Robert L. Miller, Jr.
Judge
United States District Court

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