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Commercial General Liability |
Occurrence |
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Intentional Act |
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Leila Walker (Walker), an 80 year Alzheimer patient, lived at a personal care home named Magnolia Estates (Magnolia). After living at the facility for a number of months, she was struck be another resident at the home. Two months after the initial incident, that same resident knocked her down causing several bones to be broken. Walker’s guardians later discovered that this same patient had been involved in no less than 14 other incidents.
Walker, through the guardians, filed suit against Magnolia claiming negligence, premises liability and breach of contract. Magnolia turned to their insurance company, Cincinnati Insurance Company (Cincinnati) for defense and indemnity.
Cincinnati denied coverage because the action that caused the injury was not an accident. It justified its denial by cited the insuring agreement wording that states the policy applies to bodily injury only if such bodily injury is “caused by an occurrence.” Occurrence is defined in the policy as “an accident, including continuous and repeated exposure to substantially the same general harmful conditions.” Cincinnati also cited the Expected and Intended Injury exclusion.
Magnolia and Cincinnati both requested summary judgement.
The trial court found in Magnolia’s favor and Cincinnati appealed.
The appeal court rejected the Cincinnati’s first argument based on the definition of accident being “an event which takes place without one’s foresight or expectation or design.” The insured had no foresight regarding the injury to Walker so an accident did occur. The court also rejected their second argument by noting that the Expected and Intended Injury exclusion is limited to only such acts of the insured.
The appeal court affirmed the order of the trial court and granted summary judgement to Magnolia.
Court of Appeals of Georgia, The
Cincinnati Insurance Company v. Magnolia Estates, Inc. etal al
No. A07A0103, June 27, 2007.