(Article from Insurance Law Alert, March 2016)
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Reversing a trial court decision, a Washington appellate court ruled that a series of automobile collisions constituted a single accident as a matter of law.
State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Glover-Shaw, 2016 WL 687180 (Wash. Ct. App. Feb. 16, 2016).
Shortly after crossing an intersection, an intoxicated driver struck three different vehicles. Those vehicles, in turn, hit or were hit by other nearby vehicles. State Farm sought a declaration that all of the collisions constituted a single accident under its insurance policy, subject to a single $100,000 per-accident limit. A trial court denied State Farm’s summary judgment motion, and the matter was tried before a jury, which decided against State Farm. State Farm moved for a new trial, which the court denied. The appellate court ruled that the trial court erred in denying State Farm’s summary judgment motion.
Under Washington law, “[a]ll injuries or damage within the scope of a single ‘proximate, uninterrupted, and continuing cause’ must be treated as arising from a single accident.” The appellate court ruled that the intoxicated driver’s loss of control of the vehicle was the sole, uninterrupted proximate cause of all of the collisions at issue. In so ruling, the court noted that the record established that the collisions occurred within a span of 160 feet and within four or five seconds. The court further emphasized that the driver never “regained control” of her vehicle during that time frame. As reported in our October 2015 Alert, the Second Circuit, applying New York’s “unfortunate event test,” reached a different conclusion in a motor vehicle case, holding that a series of related automobile accidents caused by a common origin and within a short time span constituted three separate accidents for purposes of policy coverage. National Liab. & Fire Ins. Co. v. Itzkowitz, 2015 WL 5332109 (2d Cir. Sept. 15, 2015), as amended (Sept. 22, 2015).