The Supreme Judicial Court of Maine has ruled that an automobile insurance company was not obligated to cover a woman's claim that she had been bitten by a dog in a parked car, because that was not an “auto accident.”
The Case
Tim McCann drove one of his employer's cars to meet Richardie Kelley, who had purchased an old pickup truck from Mr. McCann's son. Mr. McCann brought a dog he co-owned with Teresa Synder with him in the car.
During the transfer of the pickup truck, someone opened the door to the car containing the dog, and the dog, without leaving the car, bit Ms. Kelley in the face. Ms. Snyder was not present during this incident and was not a driver, passenger, or owner of the car that the dog was in when it bit Ms. Kelley.
Ms. Kelley filed a lawsuit against Ms. Snyder and Mr. McCann.
North East Insurance Company, which had issued an automobile insurance policy to Ms. Snyder for her 1999 Ford Mustang, declined to defend or indemnify Ms. Snyder.
The parties to Ms. Kelley's suit stipulated to a judgment of $100,000.
Ms. Kelley then filed a complaint against North East seeking to satisfy her judgment against Ms. Snyder through Ms. Snyder's auto insurance policy. After discovery, the parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment.
The trial court granted North East's motion for the entry of summary judgment and denied Ms. Kelley's. The trial court concluded that Ms. Snyder was not an “insured” for the purposes of Ms. Kelley's suit and that her bodily injury had not arisen from an “auto accident” as required by the policy.
The dispute reached the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.
The North East Policy
The North East policy obligated the insurer to indemnify for:
“bodily injury” . . . for which any “insured” becomes legally responsible because of an auto accident.The Supreme Judicial Court of Maine's Decision
The court affirmed.
In its decision, the court rejected Ms. Kelley's contention that the term “auto accident” in her policy was broad enough to include a dog bite that occurred in or near a car because the bite arose out of the use of a vehicle. The court explained that “accident” – a term undefined in the policy – was commonly understood to mean an event that was “without apparent cause or unexpected; an unfortunate event, [especially] one causing injury or damage.”
The court then interpreted “auto accident,” which it characterized as “an unambiguous term,” to mean an unintended and unforeseen injurious occurrence involving an automobile.
Given that meaning, it ruled that an “auto accident,” although “broader than a collision or car crash,” did “not stretch so far as to encompass bodily injury from a dog bite that occurred in a car that had absolutely no causal connection to the injury and that was not even in operation.” Accordingly, it concluded, Ms. Kelley's claim was not covered by the North East policy.
Steven A. Meyerowitz
Steven A. Meyerowitz, a Harvard Law School graduate, is the founder and president of Meyerowitz Communications Inc., a law firm marketing communications consulting company. He may be contacted at [email protected].