Our insured, an attorney, has questioned our response to not considering the homeowners bylaws as law under the Ordinance and Law coverage. She asked for case law. FC&S has a couple of California cases but none seem relevant to her question. Your article talks about various organizations that set up these laws and ordinances, but I have to agree that while it is clearly not the intent of the policy to cover bylaw rulings, is the law from a municipality and not from a bylaw?

Florida Subscriber

It is a principle in matters of insurance policy interpretation that, when words are not defined in the policy they are given their common, everyday meanings. The courts take this approach because most homeowners are not attorneys; they do, however, have access to standard desktop dictionaries.

Thus, Webster's New College Dictionary defines law as : “1. all the rules of conduct established and enforced by the authority, legislation, or custom of a given community, state, or other group; 2. the condition existing when obedience to such rules is general [to establish law and order]; 3. the branch of knowledge dealing with such rules; jurisprudence….”

But bylaw is defined as “any set of rules adopted by an organization or assembly for governing its own meetings or affairs.”

The distinction is clear. Even Black's Law Dictionary (Eighth Edition) states that bylaw is “a rule or administrative provision adopted by an organization for its internal governance and its external dealings.”

In other words, a bylaw is something the general public is not called on to obey; a law, on the other hand, is. The policy promises to pay for ordinance or law; if bylaw had been intended the policy would have stated this.