When doing a story about hunting exposures and insurance tocover such risks, the Feb. 11, 2006 accidental shooting of acompanion by Vice President Dick Cheney inevitably comes up.

Vice President Cheney shot 78-year-old Henry Whittington withbirdshot pellets from a 28-gauge Perazzi shotgun during a quailhunt on a Texas ranch, prompting a media blitz at thetime–including wide use of satirical images photo-shopping Mr.Cheney's face onto the body of cartoon hunter Elmer Fudd.

On a more serious note, however, Chris Heavrin, an underwriterfor Markel, looking at the insurance implications of such huntingaccidents, said that if a guide had been leading Vice PresidentCheney's hunting party, then that might have been a risk thatMarkel could have covered.

In that case, Mr. Heavrin said, the incident would have involvedtwo guests in a shooting accident, and the policy would havedefended the named insured for liability–but would not includecoverage for the guest/client who did the shooting.

If the parties all belonged to a hunting club, Mr. Heavrin said,then the member-to-member exclusion would have kicked in.

However, under the same scenario for a policy that did notcontain a member-to-member exclusion, as outlined by Glenn Sudol,vice president of underwriting for commercial lines at Gillingham& Associates, liability could be an issue.

Mr. Heavrin said that if the scenario did not include anorganization of any kind, and merely involved a group of friendsout hunting, then it is possible a liability claim could have beenfiled against the insurer that is covering the property–unlessthere is a specific exclusion for hunting.

A personal umbrella policy could also apply, Mr. Heavrin said,“unless [hunting is] specifically excluded in the underlyingcoverage of the umbrella's working policy.”

While Vice President Cheney's mishap generated a mediafirestorm, Mr. Heavrin said such shooting accidents happen “once ina blue moon. You probably hear it on the news as often as ithappens.”

He said the majority of claims he sees are those involving ATVaccidents, basic trips and falls, and falls from horses. (Seerelated story on page 12.)

Morris Nelson, director at RB Jones, part of the H.W. KaufmanFinancial Group, agreed that accidental shooting claims hardly everarise. “In fact,” he said, “I can't recall that I've ever seen onelike that.”