Company loses bid to recover payout for Dubai hotel fire

By MALAK HARB
Associated Press

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An insurance company that was ordered to pay more than a billion Dirhams in damages for a 2015 New Year’s Eve fire in Dubai has lost a civil lawsuit that it filed to try and recover the money. Two years after the massive fire rocked the Address Downtown hotel, Orient Insurance was ordered to pay Dubai’s state-backed developer Emaar 1.25 billion dirhams (more than $340 million) in a settlement. Emaar is behind projects like the world’s tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa. Orient then sued the contractors who worked on the hotel. It said they failed to implement fire safety requirements, contributing to the spread of the blaze.