27,018 La.App. 2 Cir. 6/21/95, Young v. Brown

• Decision Date: 21 June 1995
• Citation: 658 So.2d 750
• Parties: 27,018 La.App. 2 Cir
• Court: Court of Appeal of Louisiana — District of US

Page 750

658 So.2d 750

27,018 La.App. 2 Cir. 6/21/95

Jessie Keith YOUNG, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Thomas R. BROWN, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 27018-CA.

Court of Appeal of Louisiana Second Circuit.

June 21, 1995.

Writ Denied Oct. 27, 1995.

William D. Hall, Shreveport, for appellant.

James S. Denhollem, Rountree, Cox, Guin & Achee by Dale G. Cox, Shreveport, for appellees.

Before BROWN and WILLIAMS, JJ., and EDWARDS, J. Pro Tem.

BROWN, Judge.

Plaintiff, Jessie Keith Young, brought suit against defendants, Thomas R. Brown and his insurer, Allstate Insurance Company, for injuries sustained when Brown shot plaintiff. Allstate sought summary judgment because of a policy exclusion for damages arising from intentional or criminal acts of the insured. Brown was charged with and pled guilty to negligent injuring. The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of Allstate and plaintiff appeals. We reverse.

SUMMARY JUDGMENT

Summary judgment is the application of law to facts which are not in dispute. Thus, a trial court must identify the legal issues and the facts material to the issues and determine whether those facts are genuinely in dispute.

A motion for summary judgment is properly granted only if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to a material fact, and that mover is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. LSA-C.C.P. Art. 966; Aufrichtig v. Progressive Men's Club, 25,581 (La.App.2d Cir. 03/30/94), 634 So.2d 947; Leonard v. Stephens, 588 So.2d 1300 (La.App.2d Cir.1991).

We are presented with the legal issue of the meaning of the language "intended or criminal acts" as contained within the exclusions portion of the insurance policy. Although actual questions of intent are in dispute, plaintiff's factual narration is accepted by Allstate for the purposes of this summary judgment motion.

FACTS

In the early morning hours of June 12, 1993, plaintiff and a group of friends went to the home of Ruth Yates in south Shreveport looking for her nephew, Willie Yates. Upon arriving, they were told that Willie could be found sleeping in a pickup truck in front of the house. When plaintiff approached the truck, he found it occupied by Ruth Yates and Thomas Brown. Plaintiff and Ms. Yates got into an argument. Brown, who had consumed several beers and may have been intoxicated, concluded that plaintiff and his companions were a threat to Ms. Yates. Brown got out of the truck armed with a gun. Brown fired a shot into the ground in an effort to disperse plaintiff and his companions. Thereafter, Brown stumbled as he approached the group and fell into plaintiff. The gun fired and plaintiff was shot in the stomach. Brown denies any intent to shoot or harm plaintiff.

Plaintiff, who was hospitalized for eighteen days, incurred substantial medical bills. Brown was charged with and pled guilty to negligent injuring. Plaintiff filed suit against Brown and Allstate Insurance Company ("Allstate"), seeking damages for pain and suffering, mental anguish, medical expenses, lost wages and loss of earning capacity. At the time of the shooting, Brown was covered by a mobile home-owners and public liability insurance policy written by Allstate. This policy excluded damages resulting from an insured's intentional or criminal act.

Allstate moved for summary judgment on the question of coverage. In support of its motion, Allstate attached a transcript of defendant's guilty plea and sentencing colloquy in the criminal proceeding. Allstate argued that Brown's guilty plea to the charge of negligent injuring constituted proof that the acts leading up to plaintiff's injury were criminal in nature. Thus, under the terms of the policy, there was no coverage for plaintiff's injuries. The trial court agreed and granted summary judgment in favor of Allstate.

DISCUSSION

Criminal Acts and the Exclusion of Insurance Coverage

The insurance policy issued by Allstate to Thomas R. Brown lists exclusions from coverage, including the following:

We do not cover any bodily injury or property damage which may reasonably be expected to result from the intentional or criminal acts of an insured person or which is in fact intended by an insured person.

Allstate would have us read the clauses of the exclusion as disjunctive phrases. Therefore, according to Allstate, no coverage is provided for bodily injury reasonably expected to result from the intentional or criminal acts of an insured person or which is in fact intended by an insured person. Because the insured pled guilty to the crime of negligent injuring, Allstate contends that the criminal acts clause excludes coverage.

We are guided in our analysis and application of the instant policy exclusion by several elementary principles regarding the construction of insurance policies. These principles were concisely summarized in Louisiana Ins. Guar. v. Interstate Fire & Casualty Co., 93-C-0911 (La. 01/14/94), 630 So.2d 759:

An insurance policy is a contract between the parties and should be construed by using the general rules of interpretation of contracts set forth in the Civil Code. The judicial responsibility in interpreting insurance contracts is to determine the parties' common intent.

The parties' intent as reflected by the words in the policy determine [sic] the extent of coverage. Such intent is to be determined in accordance with the general, ordinary, plain and popular meaning of the words used in the policy, unless the words have acquired a technical meaning.

An insurance policy should not be interpreted in an unreasonable or a strained manner so as to enlarge or to restrict its provisions beyond what is reasonably contemplated by its terms or so as to achieve an absurd conclusion. Absent a conflict with statutory provisions or public policy, insurers, like other individuals, are entitled to limit their liability and to impose and to enforce reasonable conditions upon the policy obligations they contractually assume.

Ambiguity in an insurance policy must be resolved by construing the policy as a whole; one policy provision is not to be construed separately at the expense of disregarding other policy provisions.

If after applying the other general rules of construction an ambiguity remains, the ambiguous contractual provision is to be construed against the drafter, or, as originating in the insurance context, in favor of the insured. This rule of strict construction requires that ambiguous policy provisions be construed against the insurer who issued the policy and in favor of coverage to the insured. Under this rule, "equivocal provisions seeking to narrow the insurer's obligation are strictly construed against the insurer, since these are prepared by the insurer and the insured had no voice in the preparation." ...

"Ambiguity will also be resolved by ascertaining how a reasonable insurance policy purchaser would construe the clause at the time the insurance contract was entered." The court should construe the policy "to fulfill the reasonable expectations of the parties in the light of the customs and usages of the industry." ...

Yet, if the policy wording at issue is clear and unambiguously expresses the parties' intent, the insurance contract must be enforced as written....

Louisiana Ins. Guar., 630 So.2d at 763. (Citations omitted.)

The facts as outlined in this summary judgment motion present a subtle issue concerning the language of the exclusion. The purpose of the exclusion is a recognition of a long-standing public policy against insuring illegal activities and thus, promoting their commission. Indeed, the policy clearly denies coverage for intentional acts that cause injury and for injuries specifically intended by the insured.

The exclusion goes further, however, to exclude coverage for damages arising from the criminal acts of an insured. This too is in accord with public policy. The phrase "criminal acts" obviously includes reprehensible conduct resulting in the commission of a general or specific intent crime. These offenses, such as murder or aggravated battery, are such that no reasonable purchaser of a liability policy could expect to insure himself against losses arising from such behavior. And yet, Louisiana's statutes also criminalize acts resulting from non-intentional misconduct. Losses, however, resulting from negligent, non-intentional conduct are precisely the losses a liability policy buyer expects to insure against. As such, we take issue with the legal breadth accorded the phrase "criminal acts" by the trial court.

We have already recognized the strong public policy that prevents wrongdoers from indemnifying themselves against their own intentional criminal acts. There is, however, another...