Cincinnati Insurance files federal complaint against Home Depot in Connecticut

A new federal complaint was filed Feb. 20, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut and carries the caption The Cincinnati Insurance Company a/s/o Adam Manchester and Sara Rasmussen v. The Home Depot, Inc., et al. The docket entry lists the insurer as plaintiff in the a/s/o capacity for insureds Adam Manchester and Sara Rasmussen; the entry does not identify the full list of defendants included in the "et al." shorthand.

The filing date and caption were available at docketing level; the pleading itself was not included in the excerpt provided. The materials do not contain the complaint text, counts, prayer for relief, policy numbers, civil case number, judge assignment, counsel names, or specifics about incident dates or claimed damages. The original summary of the docket entry is truncated mid-sentence as "The listi," indicating additional defendant or allegation detail was omitted from the available note.

Separately supplied appellate and district-court excerpts address prior insurance litigation involving window products and provide legal context that may be relevant if the new complaint raises similar issues. Those excerpts state that "the claims against AMSCO at issue involve 'window-related defects.'" The same material records homeowners' allegations that windows manufactured by AMSCO were "defective and/or defectively installed" and that those defects "caused property damage to the interior and/or exterior of the house beyond the window defects themselves." The appellate-file metadata included in the excerpts appears as Appellate Case: 13-4155 Document: 01019347431 Date Filed: 11/26/2014 Page: 11 and cites Cincinnati Ins. Co., 921 F. Supp. 2d at 1232 for the quoted language.

The supplied legal excerpts also recount the homeowners' theory in prior litigation in a second verbatim line: "Essentially, the homeowners claim that 'faulty workmanship involving AMSCO’s windows caused property damage to something other than the insured’s work product.'" Those passages come from earlier proceedings and are not presented in the materials as direct allegations in the Feb. 20, 2026 filing; the available docket note does not confirm whether the Connecticut complaint repeats or relies on the AMSCO-themed claims.

The docket-level materials further include judicial law-talk about the insurance concept of an "occurrence." One cited district decision states, "Under Utah law, the consequences of negligent work are reasonably foreseeable and therefore no ‘accident’ resulting from that work can occur." The appellate excerpt also contains analytical text that any suggestion that negligence can never give rise to an occurrence "is the result of conflating claims of negligence resulting in damage to defective products and claims of negligence ... resulting in damage to property other than the defective products themselves," and it references Employers Mutual Casualty Co. v. Bartile Roofs, Inc., 618 F.3d 1153 (10th Cir. 2010) among the authorities discussed.

To determine what The Cincinnati Insurance Company is specifically alleging against The Home Depot, Inc., and who the "et al." defendants are, the Feb. 20, 2026 complaint and docket sheet must be pulled from the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut filings. Until that complaint is reviewed, it is not possible to say whether the new action asserts window-related product or installation defects, raises insurance-coverage "occurrence" disputes like those described in the cited opinions, or seeks the types of relief reflected in the earlier appellate materials.