Pennsylvania’s ban on sex trafficking doesn’t override insurers’ duty to defend — and possibly indemnify — a Philadelphia hotel and related entities that were allegedly negligent in failing to stop trafficking at the inn, the state’s high court ruled.
“While the General Assembly has expressed the Commonwealth’s policy against sex trafficking by criminalizing it, the criminal statute does not provide a justification for the judicial crafting of an exception to insurance coverage in a policy otherwise silent on the subject,” the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said in a unanimous decision Tuesday.
The justices were addressing questions referred to the state’s high …