Opinion ID: 1989584
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Plain language, context and history.

Text: Judge Glickman's main disagreement with the majority is rooted in his insistence that the pollution exclusion is unambiguous, that resort to historical context is unnecessary and improper, and, essentially, that if correct legal principles are applied, Nationwide wins in a cake-walk. But as we have explained at pages 321-24, the language of the clause must be examined as a whole, and in terms of what it would reasonably have meant to the insurance industry and to regulators when the exclusion was revised almost two decades ago. When all of the words of the exclusion are considered from that perspective, with due weight accorded to the historical circumstances that gave them birth, their purported clarity evaporates. To focus on the definitional words of the clause without reference either to the import of the clause as a whole or to the mischief that the exclusion was designed to redress would, indeed, make a fortress out of the dictionary, Cabell, 148 F.2d at 739, and mask the true intent of those who wrote and approved the exclusion.