Nearly seven years after a fire ripped through Ron Perelman’s Hamptons home, he is asking a New York state judge to force insurers to pay him more than $400 million for five paintings he says were damaged in the blaze.
A trial kicked off today in lower Manhattan over a lawsuit Perelman filed two years after the fire. In the suit, he claims that affiliates of Lloyd’s of London Ltd., Chubb Ltd. and American International Group Inc. issued policies that “protected one of the largest private modern art collections in the world from any damage, no matter how slight” — but balked when he sought compensation for the most expensive pieces in the residence. Those included works …