The court found that the insured hair salon and barbershop plausibly alleged an entitlement to coverage for lost business income when the government orders restricted use of the property as intended. Seifert v. IMT Ins. Co., 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 103420 (D. Minn. June 2, 2021).      Plaintiff's business was ordered to close by two executive orders issued in response to the growing number of COVID-19 cases in Minnesota. The policy covered the loss of business income due to a "suspension of your 'operations' . . . caused by direct physical loss of or damage to property . . ." Plaintiff sought coverage for his business losses. IMT Insurance Company denied the claim. Plaintiff sued and IMT moved to dismiss. The motion was initially granted without prejudice and plaintiff filed an amended complaint.      Plaintiff did not allege any damage to his property, so only the phrase "direct physical loss of" was relevant. "Direct physical loss of" was a severing of an owner's possession of property, one which caused an immediate and materially perceptible inability to occupy and control property as intended.A qualifying loss could arise from an impairment of function and value to property, when legal regulations stymied a business's ability to lawfully provide its products. Further, a loss could arise if a building's function was seriously impaired and the property was rendered useless. If a government deemed a property dangerous to use and an owner was unable to lawfully realise the business property's physical space to provide services, Minnesota courts would find this to be a cognizable impairment of function and value. Plaintiff alleged a plausibly direct physical loss of property by alleging that executive orders forced a business to close because the property was deemed dangerous to use and its owner was thereby deprived of lawfully occupying and controlling the property to provide services within it.      The policy also included a virus exclusion that precluded coverage for any loss or damage caused by any virus that induced or was capable of inducing physical distress, illness or disease. Here, plaintiff alleged that his business would be open if not for the governmental orders. Thus he alleged a single cause of loss: the executive orders. The virus exclusion was intended to preclude coverage only where there was some direct or indirect contamination of the business premises, not whenever a virus was circulating in a community and a government acted to curb its spread by means of executive orders of general applicability. The losses, as alleged, were not precluded by the virus exclusion. 

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