Dog Bite Not Covered Under Personal Auto Policy

 

July 31, 2017

 

Early this week, the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine determined that an insurance company was not liable to cover a claim under a personal auto policy that a woman had been bitten by a dog in a parked car because it did not constitute an “auto accident”. The case is Kelley v. N.E. Ins. Co., 2017 ME 166.

 

Tim McCann was driving a car that belonged to his employer to meet Richardie Kelley, who had purchased a used pickup truck from McCann's son. McCann brought his dog, whom he co-owned, along for the ride. The other co-owner of the dog, Theresa Snyder, was not present at the transaction, and did not own or drive the car that the dog was located in. In the middle of the pickup truck transfer, the side door of the truck was opened, and the dog bit Kelley in the face without exiting the vehicle. The victim filed a lawsuit against both co-owners of the dog.

 

Snyder had an auto insurance policy for her 15 year old Ford Mustang through North East Insurance Company. North East declined to defend or indemnify the insured. Then Kelley filed a complaint against North East to satisfy the judgment against Snyder through her auto policy. After discovery both parties moved for summary judgment. The trial court decided on the side of the insurance company, concluding that Snyder was not an “insured” for the purposes of the law suit, and that Kelley's injury had not occurred as a result of an “auto accident” as is required by the policy language.

 

When the case reached the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine, Kelley contended that the term “auto accident” in Snyder's policy was broad enough to include a dog bite that occurred in or near a vehicle because the bite arose from the use of the vehicle. The court explained that the term “accident” was not defined in the policy, but was commonly understood to be interpreted as an event “without apparent cause or unexpected; an unfortunate event, one causing injury or damage.” The court also interpreted “auto accident” for the parties, which means an unintended and unforeseen injurious occurrence involving an automobile, a definition which the court classifies as “unambiguous”. Using the unambiguous definitions above, and the analysis that the term “auto accident” should be interpreted as more broad than a collision, does “not stretch as 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.” In the end, the court determined that Kelley's claim was not covered by the North East policy.

 

Editor's Note: While it may seem like a dog bite is “without apparent cause or unexpected; an unfortunate event, one causing injury or damage”, the fact in this fact pattern that ruins the plaintiff's argument is that the dog was not in the insured vehicle. The insured wasn't driving her vehicle, and did not own nor was she a passenger in the vehicle the dog was in. If the insured had been a passenger or the driver of the vehicle holding the dog, or if she had been driving her insured vehicle, or even if a third party had been driving her insured vehicle, the dog bite would have had a higher probability of being covered under the personal auto policy.