Courts have long held that a cedent’s settlement allocation decisions fall within the follow-the-fortunes/follow-the-settlements doctrines. Nevertheless, with the many ways settlements and claims can be allocated to policies and then ceded to applicable reinsurance contracts there are bound to be disagreements that arise. In a recent case involving a cedent’s allocation of asbestos settlements to excess polices, the reinsurer raised various issues why it did not have to respond to the portion of the settlement billed to it, including that the cedent failed to exhaust the underlying excess policies. The case worked its way to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, no stranger to follow-the-settlements and allocation decisions.