Horseplay Incident within Scope of Homeowners' Policy

 

In RAM Mut. Ins. Co. v. Meyer, 2009 WL 2148833 (Minn.App.), Shawn Meyer and Curtis Nietfeld were students engaging in horseplay in a high school shop class when Meyer caused Nietfeld to fall and strike his head. According to multiple witnesses, Meyer appeared to be trying to stop Nietfeld or knock him down but did not appear to be trying to injure him. Meyer testified that he was just trying to pull Nietfeld toward him, not down, that he was not trying to hurt him, and that he did not think that there was any possibility that Nietfeld would be hurt.

 

Nietfeld and his parents sued Meyers and the school district for Nietfeld's injuries, alleging assault and negligence. At the time of the incident, Meyer's family had a homeowner's liability insurance policy with appellant RAM Mutual Insurance Company. Appellant brought an action to determine its rights and obligations, asserting that there was no coverage for two reasons.
First, it argued that the policy only covered bodily injuries caused by an “occurrence,” and that an occurrence was defined as “an accident which is neither expected nor intended.” Second, it argued that the policy excluded coverage for intentional acts.

 

The district court asked the jury: “Did Shawn Meyer know, or have reason to know, that a significant harm was substantially certain to result when he grabbed and/or tripped Curtis Nietfeld?” The jury answered no, and the district court then determined that, because there was no intent to injure Nietfeld, appellant's insurance policy covered Nietfeld's injuries. The appellant moved for judgment as a matter of law or, alternatively, for a new trial. Both motions were denied and the decision was appealed.

 

The first issue for the Court of Appeals of Minnesota was whether the incident was an occurrence. The policy defined an occurrence as “an accident which is neither expected nor intended.” The policy did not define the term “accident.” According to the court, the state supreme court had defined the term “accident” as “an unexpected, unforeseen, or undesigned happening or consequence.” The court held that the word “accident” encompassed both the acts of the insured and the consequences of the insured's acts. Thus, in deciding whether an incident was an accident, the finder of fact must consider whether the insured acted with specific intent to injure. If an insured did not act with specific intent to injure, then the incident was an accident.

 

After review, the court concluded that the event was an accident and thus an occurrence covered by the policy. The court based this decision on the fact that the word “accident” was defined to include unintended consequences of an insured's actions, because the testimony of witnesses overwhelmingly supported the conclusion that the boys were engaged in horseplay and that Nietfeld's injuries were not intended, and because the jury determined that Meyer did not intend to cause significant harm to Nietfeld.

 

The court next looked to whether Meyer acted with the requisite willfulness and egregiousness to trip or cause the fall of Nietfeld to invoke the intentional act exclusion in the policy. The court concluded that the exclusion did not bar coverage for injuries Nietfeld sustained during the incident in shop class.

 

According to the court, the intentional act exclusion in the policy eliminated coverage for those occurrences in which the insured's act was so wrongful, willful, and egregious, or the anticipated injury was so obvious that the injury could not be called accidental. The exclusion allowed coverage, however, in situations where the insured's intent to act was general and lacked the wrongful, willful, or egregious quality.

 

Finally, the court determined that it was not abuse of discretion for the district court to use a special-verdict question that inquired whether the insured intended to cause “significant harm.” The overriding questions of fact were whether the incident was an “accident” and whether it fell within the intentional-act exclusion of the policy, and inclusion of the word “significant” was an effort by court to distinguish the sort of harms produced in juvenile horseplay from the type of significant harms caused in typical physical assault—i.e. the type of intentional act that intentional-act provisions in insurance contracts were designed to exclude from coverage.

 

Thus, because the court found Meyer's conduct was an occurrence under the policy, because coverage was not precluded by the policy's intentional act exclusion, and because the district court's special-verdict question was not an abuse of its discretion, the appeals court affirmed the lower court decision.

 

 

 

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