{"id":906135,"date":"2026-09-17T14:17:03","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T20:17:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myconstructionexpert.com\/blog\/?p=906135"},"modified":"2026-09-17T14:17:06","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T20:17:06","slug":"insurance-policies-legal-doublets-and-surplusage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myconstructionexpert.com\/blog\/insurance-policies-legal-doublets-and-surplusage\/","title":{"rendered":"When Two Words Do Not Necessarily Do Two Jobs: Legal Doublets and Surplusage in Insurance Policies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Andrea DeField and Alex D. Pappas | Hunton Andrews Kurth<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLoss or damage.\u201d \u201cCaused by or resulting from.\u201d \u201cFaulty, inadequate or defective.\u201d \u201cDirect physical loss of or damage to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In coverage litigation, phrases like these can launch a familiar argument: if an insurance policy uses two different words, each must mean something different. Otherwise, one of them is surplusage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That argument can have force. But it does not always carry the day. As the Supreme Court cautioned in Rimini Street, Inc. v. Oracle USA, Inc.<\/em>, surplusage is an interpretive clue, not a trump card. The Court explained that where one interpretation would create redundancy and another would avoid it, that difference \u201ccan supply a clue as to the better interpretation,\u201d but \u201conly a clue,\u201d because \u201c[s]ometimes the better overall reading\u201d \u201ccontains some redundancy.\u201d 586 U.S. 334, 346 (2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That caution matters in insurance disputes. Policy language often reflects convention, repetition, and \u201cbelt and suspenders\u201d drafting. Sometimes two words do separate work. Sometimes they provide emphasis, breadth, or continuity with familiar legal phrasing. And sometimes the harder question is not what independent meaning each word has in the abstract, but whether the policy, read as a whole and under governing law, actually assigns each word a distinct job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Legal Doublets and Insurance Drafting<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Legal English is full of paired phrases, also known as legal doublets. \u201cNull and void.\u201d \u201cCease and desist.\u201d \u201cAid and abet.\u201d \u201cAssault and battery.\u201d \u201cWill and testament.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These phrases are not accidents. As John Lupton, executive director of the Illinois Supreme Court Historic Preservation Commission, has\u00a0explained<\/a>, legal doublets developed from the mixed linguistic history of English law. After the Norman Conquest, legal language drew from Old English, French, and Latin. Lawyers often paired near-synonyms from different linguistic sources so legal commands would be understood across audiences and traditions. \u201cWill and testament,\u201d for example, joins an Old English term with a Latin-derived one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coverage lawyers would be wise to consider this history because it suggests that not all paired words necessarily have separate and independent meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Useful Doublet Footnote<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Just recently, the D.C. Circuit captured the doublet playing field well in Make the Road New York v. Mullin<\/em>. There, the court described \u201cenjoin or restrain\u201d as a \u201cfamiliar legal doublet\u201d\u2014i.e., \u201ca conventional pairing of terms for emphasis and breadth, not an invitation to parse each word for independent meaning.\u201d 179 F.4th 16, 33 n.15 (D.C. Cir. 2026).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The court gave examples any lawyer would recognize, including \u201carbitrary and capricious\u201d and \u201caid and abet.\u201d Id.<\/em> It then observed that \u201c[t]he effect of a doublet is why no one has invoked the surplusage canon to hold that the term \u2018capricious\u2019 imposes some novel requirements not contained in the term \u2018arbitrary.\u2019\u201d Id.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Make the Road<\/em> is analytically instructive, it should not be overread. Make the Road<\/em> was not an insurance case, and policy interpretation turns on governing law, specific policy wording, and policy structure. Still, Make the Road<\/em> is a timely reminder to coverage practitioners about the salience of legal doublets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sixth Circuit\u2019s Insurance-Specific Caution<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

TMW Enterprises, Inc. v. Federal Insurance Co.<\/em> shows how this issue can arise in insurance policies. 619 F.3d 574 (6th Cir. 2010). There, the Sixth Circuit, applying Michigan contract law, considered policy wording involving \u201closs or damage,\u201d \u201ccaused by or resulting from,\u201d and \u201cfaulty, inadequate or defective\u201d design, specifications, workmanship, repair, construction, renovation, remodeling, grading, or compaction. Id.<\/em> at 577\u201378.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sixth Circuit rejected the idea that each word necessarily carried a separate meaning in that context. It described the wording as reflecting \u201csystematic and formulaic precision, sometimes overdone precision,\u201d and as a \u201cbelt and suspenders approach.\u201d Id.<\/em> at 577. The court did not discard the surplusage canon, but cautioned that it is \u201cone among many tools for dealing with ambiguity, not a tool for creating ambiguity in the first place.\u201d Id.<\/em> at 578. That is a useful reminder in coverage disputes: anti-surplusage principles may help choose among plausible readings, but they do not necessarily convert overlapping insurance phrasing into ambiguity or require every neighboring word to carry independent legal weight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Takeaway<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The canon against surplusage remains important in coverage disputes. Different words may signal different meanings, especially where the policy defines them separately or uses them differently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But insurance policies often contain overlapping language, sometimes by design and sometimes by convention. Before treating every variation in wording as dispositive, coverage lawyers should ask whether the policy actually makes the distinction matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At bottom, in the right case, surplusage may unlock the policy. In another, it may place too much weight on language that was never meant to bear it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

When one of your cases is in need of a construction expert, estimates, insurance appraisal or umpire services in defect or insurance disputes – please call Advise & Consult, Inc. at 801.641.8304, or email experts@adviseandconsult.net<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrea DeField and Alex D. Pappas | Hunton Andrews Kurth \u201cLoss or damage.\u201d \u201cCaused by or resulting from.\u201d \u201cFaulty, inadequate or defective.\u201d \u201cDirect physical loss of or damage to.\u201d In coverage litigation, phrases like these can launch a familiar argument: if an insurance policy uses two different words, each must mean something different. Otherwise, one… Continue reading When Two Words Do Not Necessarily Do Two Jobs: Legal Doublets and Surplusage in Insurance Policies<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10721],"tags":[9895,22,12366,12367],"class_list":["post-906135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-insurance","tag-advise-consult","tag-insurance","tag-legal-doublets","tag-surplusage","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhen Two Words Do Not Necessarily Do Two Jobs: Legal Doublets and Surplusage in Insurance Policies - Advise & Consult, Inc.<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"if an insurance policy uses two different words (legal doublet), each must mean something different. 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