Case Title: Home Indem. Co. v. EMPLOYERS NAT. INS. CORP.

Citation: 564 So. 2d 945

Docket Number: 

State: alabama

Court: Alabama Supreme Court

Date: 1990-07-13T00:00:00Z

Document:
564 So. 2d 945 (1990)
The HOME INDEMNITY COMPANY
v.
EMPLOYERS NATIONAL INSURANCE CORPORATION.
88-1467.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
July 13, 1990.
Harry Cole of Hill, Hill, Carter, Franco, Cole & Black, Montgomery, and De Martenson of Huie, Fernambucq & Stewart, Birmingham, for appellant.
Robert R. Kracke and Tom E. Ellis of Kracke, Thompson & Ellis, Birmingham, for appellee.
ADAMS, Justice.
This is an insurance case wherein an excess insurer, Employers National Insurance Corporation (hereinafter "Employers") sued a primary insurer, The Home Indemnity Company (hereinafter "Home Indemnity"), seeking reimbursement in the amount of $1,071,766.97, plus interest, for a settlement made with a third party on a personal injury claim filed against its insureds. Summary judgment was entered in favor of Employers; Home Indemnity appeals, claiming that summary judgment was improper because, it argues, its limit of liability was $500,000.
The following facts are necessary for a determination of the case: In January 1985, Grady Daniel Jordan, an employee of B.E. & K. Construction Company, Inc., was injured on a construction project at the International Paper Company plant in Mobile. Thereafter, he sued Alan Jones, Geno McRae, and Randy Cullar, supervisory employees of B.E. & K.; International Paper Company; Angelo LaCara, Jr., a supervisory employee of International Paper; The Home Insurance Company; and several fictitiously named parties. These parties were the named insureds of Home Indemnity as primary insurer and of Employers as *946 an excess insurer. As a result of his injuries, Jordan claimed damages in the amount of $5,000,000. Prior to trial, however, Home Indemnity offered $500,000 in settlement, asserting that its policy provided for a $500,000 limit on liability, in the aggregate, per occurrence, regardless of the number of insureds named in the complaint. Employers thereafter offered an additional $1,071,766.97, and the case was settled out of court. Subsequently, Employers requested indemnification from Home Indemnity in the amount of its contribution to the settlement, plus interest, claiming that the Home Indemnity policy maintained a $500,000 liability limit for each of its named insureds and that, therefore, the settlement was within the limits of the Home Indemnity coverage. The trial judge entered summary judgment in favor of Employers, holding that the Home Indemnity policy did provide a limit of $500,000, but that that limit was separate for each of its insureds named in the policy. Home Indemnity appeals. We affirm.
In order to determine if summary judgment was proper, we must analyze certain clauses of the Home Indemnity policy dealing with its liability limits. The following excerpt from the policy sets forth Home Indemnity's liability limits:
In addition to the above, there was an endorsement to the policy that read as follows:
A further endorsement read as follows:
The endorsement further states that the limit of liability for "each occurrence, aggregate operations, aggregate protective, *947 aggregate contractual and aggregate products" is $500,000. Employers contends that the first endorsement, which states that the policy will incorporate separate limits of liability, indicates that each of the named insureds will have a separate limit of liability, i.e., that each insured would be entitled to $500,000 of coverage. We agree. See Commercial Standard Insurance Co. v. General Trucking Co., 423 So. 2d 168 (Ala.1982), wherein we stated the following:
Id., at 170. In light of our decision in Commercial Standard Insurance, we note that Employers, as the excess insurer and not the author of the policy in dispute, is entitled to have any ambiguity resolved in its favor:
Id., at 171. The policy clearly states that each insured would have coverage as if separate policies had been issued for each of them and that separate liability limits existed for each insured, even if those limits were all the same. We are of the opinion that the trial court, applying the rule that an ambiguity in an insurance contract should be resolved in favor of the insured, could determine that the policy provided for a liability limit of $500,000 for each insured. Home Indemnity drafted the policy and any ambiguity regarding the liability limit should be construed in favor of Employers. See Upton v. Mississippi Valley Title Insurance Co., 469 So. 2d 548 (Ala.1985), wherein we wrote:
Id., at 555 (emphasis original).
For the foregoing reasons, the summary judgment in favor of Employers is hereby affirmed.
AFFIRMED.
HORNSBY, C.J., and MADDOX, JONES and ALMON, JJ., concur.