I am so confused. A 40 year old man living with his parents and the parents are responsible for his actions?? An accident?? How can a 40 year old man go out and shoot people and it be deemed an \”accident\”??? So let\’s say that I rent an apartment to someone that I know has a gun and may be or may not be dangerous, I can be held accoutable for his actions for not notifying someone??? Yes, it would be the prudent thing, but come one, since when are parents responsible for the actions of their adult children. Go a step futhur. If my 40 yr old child kills someone and I knew he was a drug lord and did not do anything, then can I be held responsible for his actions too??? I understand that my homeowners would not pay in either of my examples because they did not live in the home but would they not be personally responsible? I think this is wrong or am I just stupid?
The plaintiff bar and many courts believe that (for their self interest and political expedience)someone must \”pay\” for what appears to be outrageous criminal behavior regardless of individual responsibility.
Hence, you have cases which stretch the plain language of insuring clauses of homeowners policies such that, for example, coverage is denied to the husband child molestor but is provided to his spouse (who apparently was clueless about her husband\’s proclivities)for defense of the allegations. Since the acts were criminal there would be no coverage for indemnity.Nonetheless, the substantial expenses incurred were never contemplated by the underwriters for the premium.
It doesn\’t take much to strangle the Golden Goose when the insurance business is percieved to be the bottomless fountain from which to draw ever increasing amounts to assuage societal guilt.
Our personal lines company was successful in filing a homeowners illegal acts exclusion at the same time as our mold limitation endorsements. Since then, we have heard of peer companies attempting to do something similar and being told by some DOIs that such an exclusion is \”not in the public\’s best interest.\”
Unbelievable. Does anyone wonder anymore why HO rates are so expensive? I know that attorneys scour the policy to find the next loophole they can blow out of proportion and into the courts. Why bother putting in policy language if it can be bent in this manner?
Seems to me that if the parents were found negligent, then they should be legally responsible; not the insurance company. The ones being punished for the negligence is the insurance company, how is that fair? I thought that the criminal acts of Insureds is excluded on all homeowner policies, not just the umbrellas. Of course, we all know that exclusions don\’t stand up in court when tested. Since the insurance companies obviously have money trees, let them just water them and keep paying. Totally unaccepable, but what can one do ???
This is what happens when you have attorneys and courts devoted exclusively to finding ways to undermine and erode agreements to meet \”politically correct\” goals rather than enforce contracts as written and supported on rational bases from years of experience and underwriting. There no longer seem to be room in our courts for common sense, pragmatism or mundane enforcement of written contracts. The excitement and the action are in breaking these traditional standards down, and our courts and plaintiffs\’ bar are seemingly up to the challenge. Unfortunately, the rest of us must pay, not just in dollars, but the erosion of our competitve markets.
There seems to be little argument by the insurance company (if I read the article correctly), whether this negligence was a covered peril. The dispute was whether each killing was an aggregate 1 occurrence or 6 separate occurrences.
in the face by a juvenile wielding a BB gun. The juvenile said he was aiming at something else on the basketball court and the BB ricocheted off the intended target and hit my son right above his eye.
Thankfully, my son has no permanent damage. The juvenile\’s parents homeowners policy paid my son a very modest settlement. But the shooter had to assert that it was an accident, not an intentional shooting.
As I read the article, the court ruled that the parents have a separate negligence exposure for not taking away the gun, and/or not alerting mental health authorities to their son\’s condition. Based upon that analysis, and assuming that the failure to take away the gun, etc., was not intentional, then under the HO policy as I understand it, there would be coverage for the parents if the jury finds them negligent, and that the negligence was a proximate/contributing cause. Distasteful, I agree; but, a valid interpretation.
However, if that is the basis for the exposure, and thus the coverage, then I believe that the Court erred in deciding this was six separate events, because the shootings aren\’t the covered event, the parent\’s failure to act is, and that is one event. The Court appears to be mixing apples with oranges in an attempt to not just find coverage, but find enough coverage. I hope that Donegal seeks a re-hearing on the number of events ruling.
Obviously, none of us deserve to be injured by the acts of others and I hope your son\’s injury has healed.
However, the issue remains the extremes to which plain language is contorted against the drafter to achieve an unintented result.
Much like your case in which the shooter intended apparently to discharge a BB gun where others could be injured, yet claims \” unintentional result\” by hitting something he wasn\’t aiming to hit.
Years ago I investigated a similar case in which the shooter ( age 14) shot and killed a younger sibling ( who he intended to shoot because the youngster was \”tagging along\” with the older boys)and claimed the subject air rifle was defective. Ballistics disproved that contention and exonerated the product liability defendant but the tragedy remained that an eight year old was albeit \”unintentionally\” killed by his sibling.
I don\’t think any damage verdict would have fixed what was broken.
As a person with 30 years insurance experience (outside USA) this confuses the hell out of me!
Some points of curiosity:
1. They say the parents were liable for their son under the policy. Why?
Surely in the USA parents cease to be responsible for the actions of their children as soon as their children become adults?
Even if an insurance policy (and I can\’t find the Donegal wording on the \”net\”) states it covers anyone normally residing in the home, that would not make any one adult liable for actions of another, resident, adult i.e. if the \”insured\” is referred to as \”you\” any adult covered under the policy would be separately covered as \”you\” and therefore any exclusions against illegal acts by \”you\” would be excluded against the individual adult.
Conversely, other than as may accrue by marriage, the liability for any acts of one adult (you) would not fall on any other adult, there would be no cross liability.
2. Xenophobia is not a mental illness otherwise most people on the planet would be considered as mentally incompetent to some degree.
3. If it took a medical team (and I assume expert medical advice was called for) to draw the conclusion the person was mentally ill and not merely xenophobic how could the parents know?
4. What is the legal right of a parent to remove an item from an adult who has not been officially declared incompetent to own it i.e. can a 40 year old call the police and report a 60 year old for taking his belongings? Can an adult son be held liable for stealing a parents car?
5. If this person was so plainly dangerous (that his parents could be held liable) why would you expect the parents to take the risk of confiscating his firearm?
6. Until such time as the parents are declared the legal guardian of a mentally incapacitated adult how can they have any legal responsibility for them?
7. Where does the parents responsibility end? Does every parent in the USA need to obtain a psychology degree before giving birth and monitor their children through adulthood?
8. Given that the removal of a gun would also be only a hiccup in delaying a truly mental person to what extent were the parents liable? Take the gun? Knock him out? Drug him? Tie him up?
9. Does this mean also that the government accepts legal liability as soon as the phone call is made to claim mental instability of a third party?
It appears to me, unless the judges admit that their finding was based on grabbing a fistful of dollars from an insurer \”because they were there\”, this must go beyond insurance i.e. any parent (and perhaps friend or flat mate) who has contact with a possibly mentally unstable adult offspring is responsible for their actions, be they a mass murderer, compulsive thief, arsonist, etc., etc.
It is an extremely dangerous conclusion to draw that an unqualified person (or parent) can be held liable for monitoring and determining the mental health of any another person with whom they have regular contact.
On the other side of the coin, what protection is there if the parents drew the wrong conclusion and their son was not mentally incapacitated?
What if their actions in restraining the person were considered negligent or illegal?
With regard to each murder being a separate occurrence, I must read the finding on this one. Based on my experience, the concept of finding that the parents were liable for each murder as each was a separate occurrence, seems so incongruous it sounds more like a Marx\’s brothers finding.
If the parents are to be held liable for more than one occurrence then they must be held liable for more than one act of negligence i.e. how can they be held negligent for not taking the gun away several times or reporting the mental incapacity more than once when it is clear taking the gun away once or having the person declared incompetent once would have put a stop to all murders?
If this is not, and each murder was a separate occurrence, then they should be liable for only the first occurrence i.e. after the first murder the State would become responsible for negligently failing to remove the weapon or failure to restrain the mentally incapacitated person, not the parents.
They were either negligently liable or not negligently liable, but only once.
It appears to me the judges, in their eagerness to arrange for some cash to change hands, overlooked the broader ramifications of the decision.
This goes down as another piece of !@#$ handed down by our courts. The idea of six occurrences is outrageous. To go a step further. Say I\’m the next door neighbor to the shooter and knew he might be a nut. Am I liable? Hell, Archimedes said he could move the Earth with a lever if he could find a place to stand. Sounds ok to sue everyone that knew the shooter from birth. When your a nut, your a nut.
Pure, unadulterated milking of the insurance industry.
A guy with a loaded gun who goes out and shoots people. It sounds premeditated and intentional. This is a clear Coverage A exclusion under a HO-3 Policy. The justices are out to lunch and giving the policyholders right that are not in their contract.
As a fellow CPCU, I must point out that it\’s coverage section E of the HO-3 that would apply to liability exposures (section A covers loss to the dwelling).
However, I must agree with the assertion that intentional injury would be excluded under coverage section E. The standard HO-3 policy would not cover loss resulting from bodily injury for \”expected or intended injury\” caused by an insured.
The judges obviously did not read the homeowners policy, or have chosen to ignore the exclusion. Courts have been known to say that it\’s best public policy for an insurer to provide coverage even when an established exclusion is present.
Policy wording would state that bodily injury arising from an expected or intended injury is NOT covered, even if 1) the injury is different than the insured intented (only hoped to wound someone, not kill them) or 2) the injury was sustained by a person different than the insured intented (wanted to shoot person A, but shot person B instead). If it\’s intentional and there is an expected or intented injury, it\’s EXCLUDED.
Not to harp, guys, but according to the article, the covered event, according to the Court, was the parents\’ failure to take away the gun and/or notify the mental health authorities. I doubt seriously that the parents expected or intended that alleged failure to result in the injuries sustained. So, the expected or intended exclusion doesn\’t apply to the parents\’ exposure, just the son\’s. But he isn\’t the one that the Court awarded coverage to.
The Court did not rule that the parents were liable, or that they had a duty to report their son to the mental health authorities. They ruled that if the jury found such liability, then the homeowner\’s policy provided coverage for that liability.
Notwithstanding that the finding of the jury becomes the courts ruling (as the judge is not the court the judge and jury are) it is the duty of the judge to direct the jury on legal interpretation (based on the understanding the average juror will not understand the correct interpretation of a technical document).
If that advice fails then, normally, the judge would have the option of deciding the penalty i.e. if it was obvious the policy should not respond and that there was only one occurrence, not several the judge could hand down a minimal penalty indicating the jury got it wrong.
$300,000 per murder is a declaration that the court (in this case the judge) accepted the jury findings as accurate.
As indicated in the last comment, supporting a decision such as this has significant ramifications outside of the limits of an insurance policy.
If one adult is technically responsible for another (where there is no legal bond i.e. the parents are not liable for the actions of an adult offspring) you could be found negligent for not stopping someone from shooting a teller in a bank if you could see they were armed and dangerous before the teller did.
Sound ludicrous? Well these people probably had less reason to assume their son was about to become mass murderer and they were found negligently responsible.
No doubt the jury considered the insurer was big and the victims small so the insurer could afford to pay, but the simple fact of life is that the insurer will never pay, you, the paying insured, will ultimately pay.
OK good point but why not address that USAA should not have been dropped. This ruling is totally inconsistant. If you take that stance that Donegal must provide coverage to the parents then so must USAA because the failure of the Parents to notify mental health authorities or to remove the gun are not criminal acts so therefore the criminal acts exclusion in the USAA policy would not barr coverage. PA courts are zoos and the judges therefore must be the sloth exhibit!
It would be interesting to see what the two policies say. I suspect one denied coverage to an insured (and only that insured) who committed an intentional act and the other denied coverage to all insureds when any one insured committed an intentional or criminal act. That might explain why one carrier could deny coverage and one could not.
I have no problem with my being able to avail myself of my insurance coverage when I am alleged to be negligent. That is what HO liability coverage is all about. That is what I am paying for. Isn\’t the real problem here that the court allowed the negligence lawsuit to go forward? Isn\’t it good coverage law but bad tort law?
Are we reading the same article? The ruling reported on was from the Court of Appeals, and it was not on the merits of the claim, it was on the coverage issue.
The court ruled that the parents\’ exposure was covered, which I agree with based upon the wording of the policy.
The court also ruled that there were six occurrences, so that the $300K policy limit applies to each murder, which I disagree with both because of the way the policy is worded, and because that ruling seems to be disingenuous with the appellate court\’s reasoning why there is coverage to begin with. I believe that my earlier posting states this.
The appellate court did not say that the cases were worth the $300K each in regard to the parents\’ liability, nor has a jury. As far as I can tell, the trial court hasn’t yet decided that. Note that the article states that the appeal had stayed resolution of the claims.
One other issue, that no one seems to be considering, is that the suit against the carrier for coverage was probably not only by the plaintiffs in the underlying case, but the parents as well. Note that the trial court did not originally dismiss the case against the parents, only the carrier for coverage. That means that the parents were left uninsured for the suit brought by the plaintiffs. Of course the parents are going to sue to get coverage.
If you want to be angry that there is coverage, first be angry that the trial court hasn\’t dismissed the underlying claim against the parents.
I have also seen a homeowners policy pay after a bar fight. The claim there was criminal \”negligence\”. The offender was negligent in not stopping his assault.
Sometimes we fail to realize that different states have different laws. I do not know the law as it relates to parents being held liable for a 40 year old son\’s action who lives with his parents in Pennslvania.
I do know in Arizona we have what is known as \”The Family Purpose Doctrine\” and the tennacles are huge as it relates to civil liability.It is not only the parents who could be responsible for their grown children who live with them, it also makes the parent responsible when the parent(s) provide substantial support if the grown child (40 year old) does not live with them.
What is even more bizzare is in Arizona the adult child can be held responsible for the parents actions if the adult child provides substantial support to the parent(s).
Occurrence, in insurance-speak is an interesting concept. While reading the responses to this shooting, I immediately thought of the terrorist attack(s)on 9/11. The master leadholder of the Towers contends there were two attacks/ occurrences, therefore, he would be recompensed approximately 6.5 Billon per tower.
I believe the insurers have said 9/11 was one terrorist attack – thus one occurrence.
Some parents deserve to be shot. The Judge must have had an awful experience when he was a child (viz. autocratic or dictatorial rules at home, non-committed mothers, physical abuse of various kinds, separated and remarried parents, odious step-parents, child abandonment, &c)
this has been an interesting discussion; I do think that courts go beyond the intended risk transfer to ensure that someone always pays, regardless of merit. But carriers ultimately transfer this result on to their book so it is society that pays for this. The parents merely wanted defense against potential lawsuits. And the court ruled separate occurrences to allow each injured party to recover separately. What I don\’t understand is what the court would do if there were no other parties, just the shooter. Who would pay then? Some crime victims fund? Seems that if we can find some cash from somewhere, then we have settled an eye for an eye. Sometimes life isn\’t fair and you can\’t always recover….it is attorneys who look to profit from injury that makes this all possible.
The article said that the shooter was a 40 yr old attorney. Will the insurance co have subrogation rights against the Bar Assoc for not policing it\’s members? What about the law school that failed to teach the shooter that killing inocent people is not right or legal?
I am so confused. A 40 year old man living with his parents and the parents are responsible for his actions?? An accident?? How can a 40 year old man go out and shoot people and it be deemed an \”accident\”??? So let\’s say that I rent an apartment to someone that I know has a gun and may be or may not be dangerous, I can be held accoutable for his actions for not notifying someone??? Yes, it would be the prudent thing, but come one, since when are parents responsible for the actions of their adult children. Go a step futhur. If my 40 yr old child kills someone and I knew he was a drug lord and did not do anything, then can I be held responsible for his actions too??? I understand that my homeowners would not pay in either of my examples because they did not live in the home but would they not be personally responsible? I think this is wrong or am I just stupid?
The plaintiff bar and many courts believe that (for their self interest and political expedience)someone must \”pay\” for what appears to be outrageous criminal behavior regardless of individual responsibility.
Hence, you have cases which stretch the plain language of insuring clauses of homeowners policies such that, for example, coverage is denied to the husband child molestor but is provided to his spouse (who apparently was clueless about her husband\’s proclivities)for defense of the allegations. Since the acts were criminal there would be no coverage for indemnity.Nonetheless, the substantial expenses incurred were never contemplated by the underwriters for the premium.
It doesn\’t take much to strangle the Golden Goose when the insurance business is percieved to be the bottomless fountain from which to draw ever increasing amounts to assuage societal guilt.
Maybe life isn\’t fair.
Our personal lines company was successful in filing a homeowners illegal acts exclusion at the same time as our mold limitation endorsements. Since then, we have heard of peer companies attempting to do something similar and being told by some DOIs that such an exclusion is \”not in the public\’s best interest.\”
If I shoot up my house strategically in each wall, which requires extensive costs to fix and replace, each bullet counts as a separate occurrence?
Seriously. What were these judges smoking?
Unbelievable. Does anyone wonder anymore why HO rates are so expensive? I know that attorneys scour the policy to find the next loophole they can blow out of proportion and into the courts. Why bother putting in policy language if it can be bent in this manner?
Seems to me that if the parents were found negligent, then they should be legally responsible; not the insurance company. The ones being punished for the negligence is the insurance company, how is that fair? I thought that the criminal acts of Insureds is excluded on all homeowner policies, not just the umbrellas. Of course, we all know that exclusions don\’t stand up in court when tested. Since the insurance companies obviously have money trees, let them just water them and keep paying. Totally unaccepable, but what can one do ???
This is what happens when you have attorneys and courts devoted exclusively to finding ways to undermine and erode agreements to meet \”politically correct\” goals rather than enforce contracts as written and supported on rational bases from years of experience and underwriting. There no longer seem to be room in our courts for common sense, pragmatism or mundane enforcement of written contracts. The excitement and the action are in breaking these traditional standards down, and our courts and plaintiffs\’ bar are seemingly up to the challenge. Unfortunately, the rest of us must pay, not just in dollars, but the erosion of our competitve markets.
There seems to be little argument by the insurance company (if I read the article correctly), whether this negligence was a covered peril. The dispute was whether each killing was an aggregate 1 occurrence or 6 separate occurrences.
in the face by a juvenile wielding a BB gun. The juvenile said he was aiming at something else on the basketball court and the BB ricocheted off the intended target and hit my son right above his eye.
Thankfully, my son has no permanent damage. The juvenile\’s parents homeowners policy paid my son a very modest settlement. But the shooter had to assert that it was an accident, not an intentional shooting.
As I read the article, the court ruled that the parents have a separate negligence exposure for not taking away the gun, and/or not alerting mental health authorities to their son\’s condition. Based upon that analysis, and assuming that the failure to take away the gun, etc., was not intentional, then under the HO policy as I understand it, there would be coverage for the parents if the jury finds them negligent, and that the negligence was a proximate/contributing cause. Distasteful, I agree; but, a valid interpretation.
However, if that is the basis for the exposure, and thus the coverage, then I believe that the Court erred in deciding this was six separate events, because the shootings aren\’t the covered event, the parent\’s failure to act is, and that is one event. The Court appears to be mixing apples with oranges in an attempt to not just find coverage, but find enough coverage. I hope that Donegal seeks a re-hearing on the number of events ruling.
Obviously, none of us deserve to be injured by the acts of others and I hope your son\’s injury has healed.
However, the issue remains the extremes to which plain language is contorted against the drafter to achieve an unintented result.
Much like your case in which the shooter intended apparently to discharge a BB gun where others could be injured, yet claims \” unintentional result\” by hitting something he wasn\’t aiming to hit.
Years ago I investigated a similar case in which the shooter ( age 14) shot and killed a younger sibling ( who he intended to shoot because the youngster was \”tagging along\” with the older boys)and claimed the subject air rifle was defective. Ballistics disproved that contention and exonerated the product liability defendant but the tragedy remained that an eight year old was albeit \”unintentionally\” killed by his sibling.
I don\’t think any damage verdict would have fixed what was broken.
As a person with 30 years insurance experience (outside USA) this confuses the hell out of me!
Some points of curiosity:
1. They say the parents were liable for their son under the policy. Why?
Surely in the USA parents cease to be responsible for the actions of their children as soon as their children become adults?
Even if an insurance policy (and I can\’t find the Donegal wording on the \”net\”) states it covers anyone normally residing in the home, that would not make any one adult liable for actions of another, resident, adult i.e. if the \”insured\” is referred to as \”you\” any adult covered under the policy would be separately covered as \”you\” and therefore any exclusions against illegal acts by \”you\” would be excluded against the individual adult.
Conversely, other than as may accrue by marriage, the liability for any acts of one adult (you) would not fall on any other adult, there would be no cross liability.
2. Xenophobia is not a mental illness otherwise most people on the planet would be considered as mentally incompetent to some degree.
3. If it took a medical team (and I assume expert medical advice was called for) to draw the conclusion the person was mentally ill and not merely xenophobic how could the parents know?
4. What is the legal right of a parent to remove an item from an adult who has not been officially declared incompetent to own it i.e. can a 40 year old call the police and report a 60 year old for taking his belongings? Can an adult son be held liable for stealing a parents car?
5. If this person was so plainly dangerous (that his parents could be held liable) why would you expect the parents to take the risk of confiscating his firearm?
6. Until such time as the parents are declared the legal guardian of a mentally incapacitated adult how can they have any legal responsibility for them?
7. Where does the parents responsibility end? Does every parent in the USA need to obtain a psychology degree before giving birth and monitor their children through adulthood?
8. Given that the removal of a gun would also be only a hiccup in delaying a truly mental person to what extent were the parents liable? Take the gun? Knock him out? Drug him? Tie him up?
9. Does this mean also that the government accepts legal liability as soon as the phone call is made to claim mental instability of a third party?
It appears to me, unless the judges admit that their finding was based on grabbing a fistful of dollars from an insurer \”because they were there\”, this must go beyond insurance i.e. any parent (and perhaps friend or flat mate) who has contact with a possibly mentally unstable adult offspring is responsible for their actions, be they a mass murderer, compulsive thief, arsonist, etc., etc.
It is an extremely dangerous conclusion to draw that an unqualified person (or parent) can be held liable for monitoring and determining the mental health of any another person with whom they have regular contact.
On the other side of the coin, what protection is there if the parents drew the wrong conclusion and their son was not mentally incapacitated?
What if their actions in restraining the person were considered negligent or illegal?
With regard to each murder being a separate occurrence, I must read the finding on this one. Based on my experience, the concept of finding that the parents were liable for each murder as each was a separate occurrence, seems so incongruous it sounds more like a Marx\’s brothers finding.
If the parents are to be held liable for more than one occurrence then they must be held liable for more than one act of negligence i.e. how can they be held negligent for not taking the gun away several times or reporting the mental incapacity more than once when it is clear taking the gun away once or having the person declared incompetent once would have put a stop to all murders?
If this is not, and each murder was a separate occurrence, then they should be liable for only the first occurrence i.e. after the first murder the State would become responsible for negligently failing to remove the weapon or failure to restrain the mentally incapacitated person, not the parents.
They were either negligently liable or not negligently liable, but only once.
It appears to me the judges, in their eagerness to arrange for some cash to change hands, overlooked the broader ramifications of the decision.
I hope there is an appeal for everyone\’s sake.
This goes down as another piece of !@#$ handed down by our courts. The idea of six occurrences is outrageous. To go a step further. Say I\’m the next door neighbor to the shooter and knew he might be a nut. Am I liable? Hell, Archimedes said he could move the Earth with a lever if he could find a place to stand. Sounds ok to sue everyone that knew the shooter from birth. When your a nut, your a nut.
Pure, unadulterated milking of the insurance industry.
A guy with a loaded gun who goes out and shoots people. It sounds premeditated and intentional. This is a clear Coverage A exclusion under a HO-3 Policy. The justices are out to lunch and giving the policyholders right that are not in their contract.
As a fellow CPCU, I must point out that it\’s coverage section E of the HO-3 that would apply to liability exposures (section A covers loss to the dwelling).
However, I must agree with the assertion that intentional injury would be excluded under coverage section E. The standard HO-3 policy would not cover loss resulting from bodily injury for \”expected or intended injury\” caused by an insured.
The judges obviously did not read the homeowners policy, or have chosen to ignore the exclusion. Courts have been known to say that it\’s best public policy for an insurer to provide coverage even when an established exclusion is present.
Policy wording would state that bodily injury arising from an expected or intended injury is NOT covered, even if 1) the injury is different than the insured intented (only hoped to wound someone, not kill them) or 2) the injury was sustained by a person different than the insured intented (wanted to shoot person A, but shot person B instead). If it\’s intentional and there is an expected or intented injury, it\’s EXCLUDED.
An unfortunate ruling for the insurance company.
Not to harp, guys, but according to the article, the covered event, according to the Court, was the parents\’ failure to take away the gun and/or notify the mental health authorities. I doubt seriously that the parents expected or intended that alleged failure to result in the injuries sustained. So, the expected or intended exclusion doesn\’t apply to the parents\’ exposure, just the son\’s. But he isn\’t the one that the Court awarded coverage to.
Read the article again.
The Court did not rule that the parents were liable, or that they had a duty to report their son to the mental health authorities. They ruled that if the jury found such liability, then the homeowner\’s policy provided coverage for that liability.
Chris,
Notwithstanding that the finding of the jury becomes the courts ruling (as the judge is not the court the judge and jury are) it is the duty of the judge to direct the jury on legal interpretation (based on the understanding the average juror will not understand the correct interpretation of a technical document).
If that advice fails then, normally, the judge would have the option of deciding the penalty i.e. if it was obvious the policy should not respond and that there was only one occurrence, not several the judge could hand down a minimal penalty indicating the jury got it wrong.
$300,000 per murder is a declaration that the court (in this case the judge) accepted the jury findings as accurate.
As indicated in the last comment, supporting a decision such as this has significant ramifications outside of the limits of an insurance policy.
If one adult is technically responsible for another (where there is no legal bond i.e. the parents are not liable for the actions of an adult offspring) you could be found negligent for not stopping someone from shooting a teller in a bank if you could see they were armed and dangerous before the teller did.
Sound ludicrous? Well these people probably had less reason to assume their son was about to become mass murderer and they were found negligently responsible.
No doubt the jury considered the insurer was big and the victims small so the insurer could afford to pay, but the simple fact of life is that the insurer will never pay, you, the paying insured, will ultimately pay.
OK good point but why not address that USAA should not have been dropped. This ruling is totally inconsistant. If you take that stance that Donegal must provide coverage to the parents then so must USAA because the failure of the Parents to notify mental health authorities or to remove the gun are not criminal acts so therefore the criminal acts exclusion in the USAA policy would not barr coverage. PA courts are zoos and the judges therefore must be the sloth exhibit!
It would be interesting to see what the two policies say. I suspect one denied coverage to an insured (and only that insured) who committed an intentional act and the other denied coverage to all insureds when any one insured committed an intentional or criminal act. That might explain why one carrier could deny coverage and one could not.
I have no problem with my being able to avail myself of my insurance coverage when I am alleged to be negligent. That is what HO liability coverage is all about. That is what I am paying for. Isn\’t the real problem here that the court allowed the negligence lawsuit to go forward? Isn\’t it good coverage law but bad tort law?
Othello,
Are we reading the same article? The ruling reported on was from the Court of Appeals, and it was not on the merits of the claim, it was on the coverage issue.
The court ruled that the parents\’ exposure was covered, which I agree with based upon the wording of the policy.
The court also ruled that there were six occurrences, so that the $300K policy limit applies to each murder, which I disagree with both because of the way the policy is worded, and because that ruling seems to be disingenuous with the appellate court\’s reasoning why there is coverage to begin with. I believe that my earlier posting states this.
The appellate court did not say that the cases were worth the $300K each in regard to the parents\’ liability, nor has a jury. As far as I can tell, the trial court hasn’t yet decided that. Note that the article states that the appeal had stayed resolution of the claims.
One other issue, that no one seems to be considering, is that the suit against the carrier for coverage was probably not only by the plaintiffs in the underlying case, but the parents as well. Note that the trial court did not originally dismiss the case against the parents, only the carrier for coverage. That means that the parents were left uninsured for the suit brought by the plaintiffs. Of course the parents are going to sue to get coverage.
If you want to be angry that there is coverage, first be angry that the trial court hasn\’t dismissed the underlying claim against the parents.
I have also seen a homeowners policy pay after a bar fight. The claim there was criminal \”negligence\”. The offender was negligent in not stopping his assault.
Sometimes we fail to realize that different states have different laws. I do not know the law as it relates to parents being held liable for a 40 year old son\’s action who lives with his parents in Pennslvania.
I do know in Arizona we have what is known as \”The Family Purpose Doctrine\” and the tennacles are huge as it relates to civil liability.It is not only the parents who could be responsible for their grown children who live with them, it also makes the parent responsible when the parent(s) provide substantial support if the grown child (40 year old) does not live with them.
What is even more bizzare is in Arizona the adult child can be held responsible for the parents actions if the adult child provides substantial support to the parent(s).
Occurrence, in insurance-speak is an interesting concept. While reading the responses to this shooting, I immediately thought of the terrorist attack(s)on 9/11. The master leadholder of the Towers contends there were two attacks/ occurrences, therefore, he would be recompensed approximately 6.5 Billon per tower.
I believe the insurers have said 9/11 was one terrorist attack – thus one occurrence.
I\’m fascinated and confused…
Some parents deserve to be shot. The Judge must have had an awful experience when he was a child (viz. autocratic or dictatorial rules at home, non-committed mothers, physical abuse of various kinds, separated and remarried parents, odious step-parents, child abandonment, &c)
this has been an interesting discussion; I do think that courts go beyond the intended risk transfer to ensure that someone always pays, regardless of merit. But carriers ultimately transfer this result on to their book so it is society that pays for this. The parents merely wanted defense against potential lawsuits. And the court ruled separate occurrences to allow each injured party to recover separately. What I don\’t understand is what the court would do if there were no other parties, just the shooter. Who would pay then? Some crime victims fund? Seems that if we can find some cash from somewhere, then we have settled an eye for an eye. Sometimes life isn\’t fair and you can\’t always recover….it is attorneys who look to profit from injury that makes this all possible.
The article said that the shooter was a 40 yr old attorney. Will the insurance co have subrogation rights against the Bar Assoc for not policing it\’s members? What about the law school that failed to teach the shooter that killing inocent people is not right or legal?