(Article from Insurance Law Alert, February 2020)
For more information, please visit the Insurance Law Alert Resource Center.
Abrogating contrary Delaware case law, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled that the determination of whether an incident was an “accident” for purposes of coverage under a homeowner’s policy must focus on the intent of the insured party, not the victim. Applying this standard, the court concluded that an intentional assault was not a covered “occurrence” even where the assailant did not expect the resulting death. USAA Casualty Ins. Co. v. Carr, 2020 WL 467935 (Del. Jan. 29, 2020).
Amy Joyner-Francis suffered sudden cardiac death after being assaulted by Trinity Carr. Evidence in a criminal trial demonstrated that the assault was a contributing cause of the victim’s death and that death was a “result outside the risk of which Carr should have been aware.” Following the criminal trial, Carr was named as a defendant in a civil suit. USAA, which provided homeowner’s insurance to Carr’s mother, sought a declaration that it had no duty to defend or indemnify.
The Delaware Supreme Court ruled that USAA had no duty to defend or indemnify the suit against Carr. The court held that Joyner-Francis’s death was not an “occurrence,” defined as “an accident . . .which results . . .in . . .bodily injury.” The court explained that the determination of whether an incident constitutes an accident must be made from the insured’s perspective, rather than the victim’s. Therefore, because Carr intended the physical attack, it could not be deemed accidental. The court rejected Carr’s assertion that the resulting death was accidental because it was not foreseeable, stating that “the question is whether the events that caused [the victim’s] death were accidental, not whether the death itself was an accident.”
Additionally, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled that even if the attack could be construed as an “occurrence,” coverage would be excluded by a clause that applies to injury “which is reasonably expected or intended by any insured even if the resulting bodily injury . . . is of a different kind, quality or degree than initially expected or intended.” The court deemed this provision unambiguous, finding the meaning of the exclusion to be clear: coverage is excluded where the insured intended to cause some injury, even if the actual resulting injury was more or less serious than intended.