Rozenfeld v. Medical Protective Co.

• Decision Date: 04 January 1996
• Docket Number: Nos. 95-1535,95-1610,s. 95-1535
• Citation: 73 F.3d 154
• Parties: Irving H. ROZENFELD, Plaintiff-Appellee, Cross-Appellant, v. MEDICAL PROTECTIVE COMPANY, Defendant-Appellant, Cross-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 154

73 F.3d 154

64 USLW 2494

Irving H. ROZENFELD, Plaintiff-Appellee, Cross-Appellant, v. MEDICAL PROTECTIVE COMPANY, Defendant-Appellant, Cross-Appellee.

Nos. 95-1535, 95-1610.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued Nov. 7, 1995.

Decided Jan. 4, 1996.

Christopher D. Oakes, Charles E. Dobrusin, Shefsky, Froelich & Devine, Chicago, IL, Clifford E. Yuknis (argued), Thomas J. Lipscomb, Lipscomb & Yuknis, Chicago, IL, for plaintiff-appellant.

D. Patterson Gloor, David C. Van Dyke, Cassiday, Schade & Gloor, Chicago, IL, Lynn D. Dowd (argued), Levin, McParland, Phillips, Leydig & Haberkorn, Chicago, IL, for defendant-appellee.

Before POSNER, Chief Judge, COFFEY, Circuit Judge, and SKINNER, District Judge. ^*

POSNER, Chief Judge.

This is a diversity suit, governed by the law of Illinois, for the breach of a contract of liability insurance. The plaintiff is a physician, Dr. Rozenfeld, who in 1970 had prescribed the drug Mebaral, an anti-convulsive drug, for an epileptic woman named Karen Herman. He represcribed the drug for her in 1972. Two years later, in April of 1974, Mrs. Herman, who was now pregnant, called Dr. Rozenfeld (whom she had not seen in the interim) and told him, for reasons that are unclear, that he was damaging her baby. Apparently the reference was to his having prescribed Mebaral for her. The prescription that he had given her in 1972 had long since run out (it was only for a four-month supply of the drug), but her father, himself a physician, had refilled it. At all events, in this telephone conversation, and another one later in the month, Dr. Rozenfeld told Mrs. Herman to reduce the dosage gradually to zero.

A month later she came to see him. She was no longer taking the drug, and he told her to stay off it as long as she was doing well. This was the last time he saw her until after her baby was born. In August, Mrs. Herman had a gran mal seizure. The baby was born the following month with serious birth defects. Dr. Rozenfeld put Mrs. Herman back on Mebaral in November. In 1983 a suit for medical malpractice was brought against Rozenfeld on behalf of the injured child. Medical Protective Company ("Med Pro"), a malpractice insurer, defended Dr. Rozenfeld. The parties settled for $300,000, but Med Pro refused to pay more than $200,000, precipitating this suit.

Dr. Rozenfeld had three policies from Med Pro. The first provided coverage from July 13, 1973, to July 13, 1974, the second from July 13, 1974, to July 13, 1975, and the third from July 13, 1976, to July 13, 1977. The first policy, which is the one Med Pro believes applicable to the malpractice suit, had a limit of only $200,000 per occurrence. The second policy, which is the one that Rozenfeld believes applicable, had a limit of $1 million. The district judge agreed with Rozenfeld and so awarded him $100,000 in damages. But the judge declined to hold that Med Pro's denial of coverage had been "vexatious and unreasonable" and so declined to award Rozenfeld the limited punitive damages authorized by 215 ILCS 5/155(1), which preempts the common law right to punitive damages in a suit against an insurance company for denying coverage unreasonably or in bad faith. Cramer v. Insurance Exchange Agency, 275 Ill.App.3d 68, 211 Ill.Dec. 436, 438, 655 N.E.2d 465, 467 (1995), app. allowed, Ill.S.Ct., Dec. 6, 1995. Both parties appeal.

The first and second policies insured Rozenfeld against "any claim for damages, at any time filed, based on professional services rendered or which should have been rendered ... in the practice of the insured's profession ... during the term of this policy." Med Pro argues that the professional service upon which the Hermans' claim was based was Rozenfeld's direction to Mrs. Herman in April and May of 1974, during the term of the first policy, to phase out and then stay off Mebaral. This interpretation of the policy is consistent with the policy's language. The policy speaks of "professional services rendered or which should have been rendered," rather than of the tort of medical malpractice. A tort does not occur when the tortfeasor violates his duty of care to the victim, but when the tortfeasor injures the victim. Town of Thornton v. Winterhoff, 406 Ill. 113, 92 N.E.2d 163, 166 (1950); Rice v. Nova Biomedical Corp., 38 F.3d 909, 915 (7th Cir.1994). Dr. Rozenfeld's action in taking Mrs. Herman off Mebaral inflicted no injury until she had the convulsion, and that did not occur until August 1974, which was in the second policy period. But this means that if the policy is a policy of insurance against liability for torts committed (or alleged to be committed, for the Hermans' claim was settled without a determination of Dr. Rozenfeld's liability) during the policy period, the applicable policy is the second, not the first.

Med Pro asks us to distinguish between the breach of the duty of care and the "manifestation" of the injury resulting from that breach. The suggested distinction is imprecise. There is the breach of the duty of care; there is the injury resulting from it; and there is the manifestation of that injury, which may be long delayed. A physician who makes a mistake during an operation may injure tissues yet the injury produce no symptoms for many years. The injury and its manifestation would not coincide. The distinction is primarily relevant to the statute of limitations, although it sometimes arises in cases in which it is unclear when exactly the injury insured against took place. See Eljer Mfg., Inc. v. Liberty Mutual Ins. Co., 972 F.2d 805, 809 (7th Cir.1992). The distinction does not figure in our case. There is no suggestion that taking Mrs. Herman off Mebaral injured her. Mebaral was just a protection against convulsions, an injury preventive. It was months before there was any injury.

If the policies issued to Dr. Rozenfeld had said that he was being insured against claims arising from torts committed during the policy period, then it would be clear that the second policy was applicable rather than the first, because there is no tort without injury and there was no injury until the second period. It would be only slightly less clear if the policies covered "accidents." If you step on the accelerator when you mean to step on the brake, the "accident" does not occur until, as a consequence of your mistake, you plow into the car in front of you. And so with Dr. Rozenfeld's having taken his patient off Mebaral--this set the stage for the "accident," the convulsion that injured Mrs. Herman's fetus, but was not the accident. The general rule, and it is the rule followed in Illinois, is that an "accident" does not "occur," within the meaning of a policy of liability insurance, until the person claiming against the insured is injured. Great American Ins. Co. v. Tinley Park Recreation Comm'n, 124 Ill.App.2d 19, 259 N.E.2d 867 (1970); Millers Mutual Fire Ins. Co. v. Ed Bailey, Inc., 103 Idaho 377, 379, 647 P.2d 1249, 1251 (1982); Baylor Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc. v. Federated Mutual Ins. Co., 987 F.2d 415, 418 (7th Cir.1993) (Indiana law); 11 Couch on Insurance Sec. 44:8 (2d ed. 1982, and June 1995 Supp.). Lund v. American Motorists Ins. Co., 797 F.2d 544 (7th Cir.1986), is to the contrary, but we were deferring, as we had to because it was a diversity case governed by Wisconsin law, to Wisconsin's rejection of the general rule.

The policies in issue here do not use "accident," or some equivalent word connoting impact or injury; and some cases that construe policies which, like the ones here, define coverage by reference to the acts or omissions of the insured, rather than to the accidents (and hence injuries) caused by those acts or omissions, have held that coverage exists if the act or omission occurs during the policy period. E.g., Travelers Ins. Co. v. National Union Fire Ins. Co., 207 Cal.App.3d 1390, 255 Cal.Rptr. 727, 730 (1989); Schultheis v. Centennial Ins. Co., 108 Misc.2d 725, 438 N.Y.S.2d 687 (Sup.Ct.1981). We rejected this approach in American Home Assurance Co. v. Dykema, Gossett, Spencer, Goodnow & Trigg, 811 F.2d 1077, 1085 (7th Cir.1987), interpreting Illinois law; but the decision is strongly criticized in 2 Allan D. Windt, Insurance Claims and Disputes: Representation of Insurance Companies and Insureds Sec. 11.05, pp. 220-21 (3d ed. 1995); and, since it was decided, two decisions by Illinois' intermediate appellate court have intimated that when a liability policy insures against claims arising from an occurrence or from an act or omission the date of the injury may be irrelevant. Pekin Ins. Co. v. Janes & Addems Chevrolet, Inc., 263 Ill.App.3d 399, 200 Ill.Dec. 843, 847, 636 N.E.2d 34, 38 (1994); Kinzer v. Fidelity & Deposit Co., 273 Ill.App.3d 211, 209 Ill.Dec. 706, 712, 652 N.E.2d 20, 26 (1995). These are brief dicta, however, and their significance as predictors of what the state's highest court would do if presented with the issue is, to say the least, uncertain.

Med Pro places much greater weight on another recent decision by the intermediate appellate court, Hartford Casualty Ins. Co. v. Medical Protective Co., 266 Ill.App.3d 781, 204 Ill.Dec. 321, 641 N.E.2d 545 (1994)--understandably, since it involved the identical policy language in a policy issued by the same insurer. But the case is not in point. It was a case in which the insured tried to "stack" successive policies in order to increase the limits of coverage of each. A physician had failed to diagnose a patient's ear condition and as a result the patient had suffered a hearing loss that extended over several policy periods. The physician wanted to add together the limits of the successive policies in order...