This is a fun but dry (don’t worry – you will get the joke in a second) decision from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on whether rainwater that accumulates on a roof constitutes “surface waters” for purposes of an insurance policy. Of more practical value to most lawyers and of more interest to me, however, is the Court’s detailed presentation of the proper way to determine ambiguity in an insurance policy under Massachusetts law. Deciding the issue on a certified question from the First Circuit, the state’s Supreme Court provided a tutorial on when insurance policy language is ambiguous and how to properly analyze that question.

Too often, and for many reasons, insurance coverage disputes don’t get past the insured arguing that the relevant language is ambiguous, and the case eventually resolving, either on summary judgment or in settlement, without that argument being carefully broken down and thought through. But when the question of ambiguity in an insurance policy is carefully analyzed, as it was here, you see that the very issue of determining whether or not ambiguity exists is, in and of itself, a fascinating exercise in linguistics. You also see that the presence or absence of ambiguity in insurance policy language – and indeed in all contracts – is not an entirely subjective question but is instead something that can and should be rationally determined based on existing standards for making that determination.