(Article from Insurance Law Alert, September 2025)
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Holding
Fatal injury due to a shooting incident was not caused by an “occurrence.” State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. v. Giannone, 2025 U.S. App. LEXIS 19854 (6th Cir. Aug. 5, 2025).
Background
The incident arose when Matthew Mollicone, with his wife in the car, drove to the home of Daniele Giannone to confront him about an alleged affair with his wife. Both men had firearms, and a gunfight ensued in Giannone’s driveway. At one point, Giannone, injured with two gunshot wounds, ran into his home to retrieve another firearm. When he returned to the driveway, Mrs. Mollicone was backing out with Mr. Mollicone in the passenger seat. Giannone fired at the car, claiming he saw a gun poke out of the passenger window and that he was aiming at Mr. Mollicone. Mrs. Mollicone was fatally wounded.
Her estate filed a lawsuit against Giannone alleging negligence, assault and battery. Giannone sought defense and indemnity from State Farm, his homeowner’s insurers, who, in turn, filed a declaratory judgment action seeking a ruling of no coverage.
A Michigan district court granted State Farm’s summary judgment motion, and the Sixth Circuit affirmed.
Decision
The Sixth Circuit ruled that the bodily injury was not caused by an “occurrence” defined as “an accident.” Under Michigan’s subjective standard, a court looks to whether an insured should have reasonably expected the consequences of its act to determine whether it could be deemed accidental. Even viewing the facts in a light most favorable to Giannone, the court ruled that Mrs. Mollicone’s death was a foreseeable result of aiming and shooting a gun at a vehicle she occupied, regardless of whether she was the intended target.
The court rejected Giannone’s assertion that coverage existed pursuant to an exception to an intentional acts exclusion, which provided that the exclusion did not apply to bodily injury “resulting from the use of force to protect persons or property.” The court declined to rule on the factual issue of whether Giannone’s actions were in self-defense, instead ruling that even if he acted in self-defense, coverage would still be unavailable because there was no occurrence. The court cited numerous Michigan appellate court decisions holding that an intentional act taken in self-defense is not accidental and therefore not an occurrence.
Comments
The Sixth Circuit distinguished cases in which Michigan courts held that an insured’s subjective expectations rendered intentional actions accidental for purposes of insurance coverage. One case involved an accidental stabbing as the result of a knife brandishing incident and the other involved the shooting of a gun that the actor believed to be unloaded. The court deemed both cases “meaningfully different” from the present case, stating: In neither case “did the insured party use a weapon with a belief that he could cause bodily harm.” In contrast, here, “[t]he act took place as intended, even if Giannone desired a different result.”