Ms. Claxton subsequently sued Mr. Lowery, seeking damages for injuries she allegedly had sustained.

Mr. Lowery held an insurance policy with Georgia Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Company, which he claimed covered any liability he may have for Ms. Claxton's injuries. He said that the carriage he was driving was designed to be pulled by one horse or mule, that it could not be hooked up to a motor vehicle, and that he had not charged Ms. Claxton a fee to ride in the carriage.

Georgia Farm Bureau sought declaratory relief, claiming that there was no coverage available to Mr. Lowery under his policy given the circumstances of the accident and the livestock exclusion in Mr. Lowery's policy.

The trial court denied Georgia Farm Bureau's motion. It decided that because neither Ms. Claxton nor any other party had paid Mr. Lowery a fee to drive the carriage, the livestock exclusion in Mr. Lowery's policy did not apply.

Georgia Farm Bureau appealed.

The Georgia Farm Bureau Policy

Mr. Lowery's policy stated that it:

does not apply to . . . [t]he use of any livestock or other animal, with or without an accessory vehicle, for providing rides to any person for a fee or in connection with or during a fair, charitable function, or similar type of event[.] 

The appellate court affirmed the trial court's decision denying Georgia Farm Bureau's summary judgment motion with respect to its obligation to cover Mr. Lowery – but it disagreed with the trial court's reasoning.

In its decision, the appellate court noted that the trial court had focused specifically on the phrase “for a fee” in the livestock exclusion in Mr. Lowery's policy, determining that because neither Ms. Claxton nor any other party had paid Mr. Lowery a fee to drive the carriage, the exclusion did not apply.

The appellate court pointed out that the policy excluded coverage where the insured provided rides “for a fee or in connection with or during a fair, charitable function or similar type of event.” (Emphasis supplied.) According to the appellate court, the trial court's omission of this “small but critical word” caused it to err in denying summary judgment on this ground.

However, the appellate court continued, summary judgment on this claim was not appropriate because there was a genuine issue of fact as to whether the parade was a “similar type of event” to a fair or charitable function and whether, because the parade had concluded at the time of the accident, Mr. Lowery had been providing a ride to Ms. Claxton in the carriage “in connection with” the event.

The appellate court acknowledged that Mr. Lowery was using a mule to draw the carriage at all relevant times, including during the parade and as he and Ms. Claxton were returning to Mr. Lowery's vehicle, but said that it was disputed whether the parade constituted a “fair, charitable function, or similar type of event.”

According to the appellate court, the inclusion of the words “similar type” required analysis of whether the Christmas parade (following which the accident allegedly had occurred) was similar to a fair or charitable function. It pointed out that the word “similar” was undefined, and decided that whether one thing was similar to another thing was “necessarily a multi-faceted, qualitative, and subjective determination.” In brief, the appellate court stated, whether something was similar to something else was “almost inherently ambiguous.”

It then decided that whether the Christmas parade was an event similar to a fair or charitable function was an issue “not ripe for summary adjudication.”

Moreover, the appellate court continued, whether Mr. Lowery had been providing a ride in connection with the event at the time of the accident also was a question of fact. It noted that the parade had ended at the time of the accident and that Mr. Lowery and Ms. Claxton were riding the carriage back to Mr. Lowery's vehicle. As with the determination of whether the parade constituted a “similar type of event” contemplated by the insurance policy, whether Mr. Lowery's act of driving back to his vehicle was taken in connection with the parade was a question of fact for a jury to resolve, the appellate court said.

Accordingly, the appellate court affirmed the trial court's denial of Georgia Farm Bureau's motion for summary judgment with respect to its coverage obligations under Mr. Lowery's policy.

The case is Georgia Farm Bureau Mutual Ins. Co. v. Claxton, No. A18A0737 (Ga. Ct.App. April 2, 2018).