874
Breyer, J., dissenting
the finding. 90 F. 3d, at 982. And the finding is adequately supported.
The District Court found that the insurance policies were not worth substantially more than $1.535 billion in part because there was a "significant risk" that the insurance policies would soon turn out to be worth nothing at all. 162 F. R. D., at 526. The court wrote that "Fibreboard might lose" its coverage, i. e., that it might lose "on one or more issues in the [California] Coverage Case, or that Fibreboard might lose its insurance coverage as a result of its assignment settlement program." Ibid.
Two California insurance law experts, a Yale professor and a former state court of appeals judge, testified that there was a good chance that Fibreboard would lose all or a significant part of its insurance coverage once the California appellate courts decided the matter. 90 F. 3d, at 974. And that conclusion is not surprising. The Continental policy (for which Fibreboard had paid $10,000 per year) carried limits of $500,000 "per-person" and $1 million "per-occurrence," had been in effect only between May 1957 and March 1959, and arguably denied Fibreboard the right to settle tort cases as it had been doing. See App. to Pet. for Cert. 267a. The Pacific policy was said (no one could find a copy) to carry a $500,000 per-claim limit, and had been in effect only for one year, from 1956 to 1957. See ibid. To win significantly in respect to either of the two policies, Fibreboard had to show that the policies fully covered a person exposed to asbestos long before the policy year (say, in 1948) even if the disease did not appear until much later (say, in 2002). It also had to explain away the $1 million per occurrence limit in the Continental policy, despite policy language defining "one occurrence" as " '[a]ll . . . exposure to substantially the same general conditions existing at or emanating from each premises location.' " Brief for Respondents Continental Casualty et al. 5. And Fibreboard had to show that its tort-suit settlement practice was consistent with the policy.
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