Coverage — continued from Previous Page
Some courts have found an excep-
tion to this general protection of inno- cent insureds when a clause excluding coverage for particular conduct refers to “an” insured or “any” insured, rather than “the” insured. (E.g., Medill v. Westport Ins. Corp. (2006) 143 Cal.App.4th 819, 832 [49 Cal.Rptr.3d 570] [“California cases have determined that the phrases ‘any insured’ or ‘an insured’ unambiguously preclude coverage to all persons covered by the policy if any one of them engages in excludable conduct.”]) However, courts have recently narrowed this exception, reaffirming their reluctance to bar coverage for an innocent insured solely because of the intentional misconduct of another insured. For example, the California Supreme
Court addressed this issue just last year in Minkler v. Safeco Insurance Co. (2010) 49 Cal.4th 315 [232 P.3d 612]. There, the insured sought coverage under her home- owner’s policies when she was sued for negligent supervision of her son (also an insured under the policies) who had allegedly molested a boy while he was the boy’s Little League coach. The policies contained intentional acts exclusions stat- ing that personal liability coverage did “not apply to bodily injury or property damage: (a) which is expected or intended
by an insured or which is the foreseeable result of an act or omission intended by an insured.” The policies’ “Conditions” provisions contained a severability-of- interests clause stating: “This insurance applies separately to each insured. This condition will not increase our limit of lia- bility for any one occurrence.” The insur- er argued that the exclusion’s reference to “an” insured barred coverage for the mother’s negligent supervision as well as her son’s intentional acts. The court disagreed, concluding: [A] reasonable interpretation of the severability language simply contradicts any inference that a coverage exclusion for the intentional acts of “an insured”– i.e., one insured among several – would bar coverage for all others, such that all must sink or swim together. The sever- ability clause stated that “[t]his insur- ance” (italics added) was “separately” applicable to “each insured.” The broad reference to separate application of “this insurance” suggested, as indicated above, that each person the policies cov- ered would be treated, for all policy pur- poses, as if he or she were the sole person covered – i.e., that in effect, each insured had an individual policy whose terms applied only to him or her.
(Id. at 323.)
Accordingly, because the insured
mother would reasonably have expected the policies to cover her separately for her independent acts or omissions, notwith- standing the exclusion’s reference to “an” insured, the mother should be covered so long as she herself had not acted in a manner for which the intentional acts exclusion barred coverage. In other words, in light of the severability clause in [the mother’s] policies, the exclusion of coverage for injuries arising from “an” insured’s intentional acts did not pre- clude coverage for [the mother’s] liability, if any, arising from the molestations for the sole reason that [her son], another insured under the policies, had commit- ted intentional, and thus excludable, acts. Instead, [the mother’s] coverage must be analyzed on the basis of whether she herself committed an act or acts that fell within the intentional act exclusion. (Id. at 333.) Even more recently, the Supreme
Court reached a similar conclusion in Century-National Insurance Co. v. Garcia (2011) 51 Cal.4th 564 [120 P.3d 621]. The Garcias and their son were all insureds under their homeowner’s policy. Their home suffered significant damage when their son set fire to his bedroom. The Garcias filed a claim and the insurer denied, relying on an intentional
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76— The Advocate Magazine JUNE 2011
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