Guaranty Nat. Ins. Co. v. Marshall County Bd. of Educ.
| Decision Date | 10 March 1989 |
| Citation | 540 So.2d 745 |
| Parties | 52 Ed. Law Rep. 1335 GUARANTY NATIONAL INSURANCE COMPANY, a corporation v. MARSHALL COUNTY BOARD OF EDUCATION, et al. 87-1357. |
| Court | Alabama Supreme Court |
William A. Scott, Jr., and R. Larry Bradford of Clark & Scott, Birmingham, for appellant.
T.J. Carnes of Carnes & Carnes, Albertville, for appellees.
The Marshall County Board of Education ("Board") and four of its supervisory employees, Dewey Drain, Kenneth Wilson, Tony Simmons, and James Burkes ("employees"), filed a declaratory judgment action seeking an interpretation of a general liability policy issued by Guaranty National, after it had refused to defend the Board and the employees in an underlying lawsuit. The parties submitted the following stipulation of facts:
The trial court entered a judgment in favor of the Board and the employees, holding that Guaranty National was obligated to defend and indemnify the Board and the employees. Guaranty National appealed. We affirm. The Board, as noted in the stipulation, was dismissed in the underlying suit.
Guaranty National issued a general liability insurance policy for a period commencing September 1, 1984, and running to September 1, 1985, in which "Marshall County School System" was designated the "Named Insured" and the activity of the "insured" was described as "management and operation of the Marshall County School System."
The policy provided that
Insured under the policy were:
A wrongful death action was brought by the administrators of the estate of Talley Hayes, Sr., against the Marshall County Board of Education and Kenneth Wilson, superintendent of education for Marshall County; Tony Simmons, who was, at the time of the accident, supervisor of transportation for the school system; James Burkes, an employee of the school system who served as foreman over the mechanics in the transportation department; and Dewey Drain, supervisor of the Marshall County Materials Center, where school books, instruction materials, supplies, etc., were stored.
Seventy-four-year-old Talley Hayes, Sr., had been an employee of the school system for many years, and had retired. Thereafter, he became a worker under the CETA program 1. When that job was terminated, he was employed by the system on a part-time basis. His general duties were in the materials center and included the transportation of materials, supplies, and equipment to and from the various schools. He also did janitorial work at the warehouse and sometimes did some mowing.
The complaint filed by Hayes's administrators against the four supervisory defendants charged that they had a duty to provide Hayes "a safe place to work and/or [a] reasonably safe work environment" and that they had failed to do so. By another count, the complaint alleged that these defendants "each expressly and/or impliedly warranted that the conditions under which the plaintiff's decedent was working were safe," and that they each "negligently, wantonly and/or wilfully breached their duty by failing to provide plaintiff's decedent a safe place to work and/or a reasonably safe work environment."
It was stipulated that Hayes was driving a mini-van from which the seats had been removed. The cause of the fire in the van was unknown. The van was not involved in an accident with any other vehicle, and it did not run off the road. The complaint alleged that Hayes was fatally injured when the mini-van "was caused to explode." It alleges no cause of the explosion.
When the defendants to the wrongful death action called upon Guaranty National to defend them, it refused, relying upon the following two exclusions in the policy:
"Automobile" is defined in the policy to mean a "land motor vehicle, trailer or semi-trailer designed for travel on public roads."
Guaranty National argues that it has no duty to defend the lawsuit against the four supervisory employees of the Board because exclusion (c) excludes coverage for any liability arising out of the ownership, operation, or use of any automobile. Whether exclusion (c) would be applicable to the suit against the Board under these facts, we need not decide, because the Board has been dismissed and because it is stipulated that the injury resulting in Talley's death arose out of and in the course of his employment by the Board, and is, thus, excluded under exclusion (i). The question before us is whether exclusion (c) applies to the four supervisory employees who have been sued for alleged negligence in failing to provide Hayes with a safe place to work. These four individuals did not own the mini-van, were not operating it, and were not using it at the time of the accident. The injury itself has not yet been shown to have arisen out of Hayes's operation or use of the mini-van. The policy...
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