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Nature of Suit Code: 110
Nature of Suit: Insurance
Cause of Action: 

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NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION

File Name: 16a0530n.06

No. 16-5143

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

UNDERWRITERS SAFETY AND CLAIMS, INC.; 

FIREMAN’S FUND INSURANCE COMPANY,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.

TRAVELERS PROPERTY CASUALTY 

COMPANY OF AMERICA; THE CINCINNATI 

INSURANCE COMPANY,

Defendants-Appellees.

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ON APPEAL FROM THE 

UNITED STATES DISTRICT 

COURT FOR THE WESTERN 

DISTRICT OF KENTUCKY

BEFORE: ROGERS, SUTTON, and COOK, Circuit Judges.

ROGERS, Circuit Judge. Richard Passfield was running timed quarter-miles with the 

rest of Bellarmine University’s lacrosse team when he collapsed and died of sudden heart failure. 

His estate sued Bellarmine for wrongful death. Bellarmine held two insurance policies at the 

time. Both Travelers’s policy and CIC’s policy contain a provision that excludes coverage over 

sports participants. Travelers’s insurance contract contains a second provision that expands

coverage to medical-malpractice injuries. The district court interpreted both policies to exclude 

coverage over Passfield’s death and granted judgment on the pleadings to Travelers and to CIC. 

Because Passfield’s fatal injury falls squarely within the sports-participants exclusion in both 

policies, and because Travelers’s sports-participants exclusion trumps the medical-malpractice 

extension, neither policy covers Passfield’s death.

 Case: 16-5143 Document: 26-2 Filed: 09/13/2016 Page: 1
No. 16-5143, Underwriters Safety & Claims, Inc. v. Travelers Prop. Cas. Co.

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Richard Passfield was a sophomore and a lacrosse player at Bellarmine University. On 

October 31, 2005, at around eight in the morning, Bellarmine’s lacrosse team was running timed 

quarter-miles, with eighty seconds for each quarter-mile and eighty seconds of rest between the 

intervals. During either the second quarter-mile or the third quarter-mile, Passfield collapsed and 

died of sudden heart failure. Passfield’s estate sued Bellarmine for wrongful death. The estate 

alleged that Bellarmine caused Passfield’s death by failing to provide an adequate preparticipation medical screening to Passfield and by failing to respond adequately when Passfield 

collapsed. Bellarmine sought coverage and defense from its insurers: Travelers Property 

Casualty Company of America (“Travelers”) and the Cincinnati Insurance Company (“CIC”). 

But both Travelers and CIC denied coverage. Bellarmine settled with Passfield’s estate and then 

sued Underwriters Safety and Claims, Inc. (“Underwriters”), its insurance agent, for failing to 

procure a policy that insured Passfield’s death. Months later, Bellarmine settled with 

Underwriters and assigned its rights under the insurance policies to Underwriters and to 

Underwriter’s own insurer, The Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company (“FFIC”). 

Asserting Bellarmine’s rights, Underwriters and FFIC sued Travelers and CIC for breach 

of contract for failing to defend Bellarmine against Passfield’s estate. The district court granted 

judgment on the pleadings to Travelers and to CIC. Underwriters Safety & Claims, Inc. v. 

Travelers Prop. Cas. Co., 152 F. Supp. 3d 933 (W.D. Ky. Jan. 22, 2016). The district court 

interpreted both policies’ sports-participants exclusions, based on their plain texts, to be “clear 

and unambiguous” in excluding coverage over Passfield’s death. Id. at 936 (Travelers’s 

exclusion); id. at 938 (CIC’s exclusion). The district court also determined that Travelers’s 

XTEND Endorsement did not trump that exclusion. Id. at 936–37.

 Case: 16-5143 Document: 26-2 Filed: 09/13/2016 Page: 2
No. 16-5143, Underwriters Safety & Claims, Inc. v. Travelers Prop. Cas. Co.

-3-

Passfield’s death falls squarely within Travelers’s Athletic Participants Exclusion and 

CIC’s Sports Participants Exclusion. Travelers’s Athletic Participants Exclusion provides: “This 

insurance does not apply to ‘bodily injury’ to any person engaged in athletic, exercise, or sports 

activities . . . .” CIC’s Sports Participants Exclusion provides: “This insurance does not apply to: 

‘[b]odily injury’ . . . to any person while . . . practicing for or participating in any contest or 

exhibition of an athletic or sports nature . . . .”1 When Passfield collapsed and died, he was at 

Bellarmine’s lacrosse practice, convened by Bellarmine’s lacrosse coach, running timed quartermiles with the rest of the lacrosse team. The exclusions plainly apply. Even Underwriters and 

FFIC agree that the exclusion “initially appears . . . to deny coverage for the claims asserted in 

the Passfield Action.”

While Underwriters and FFIC urge this court to look beyond the exclusions’ text to 

“purpose,” and while they argue that the exclusions’ purpose narrows the exclusions to injuries 

that are “inherent” to playing sports, or “normally encountered” in playing sports, their argument 

fails.

2

Kentucky law precludes the argument. Under Kentucky law, “[w]here the terms of an 

insurance policy are clear and unambiguous, the policy will be enforced as written.” Kemper 

Nat’l Ins. Co. v. Heaven Hill Distilleries, Inc., 82 S.W.3d 869, 873 (Ky. 2002). Here, the plain 

texts of the two exclusions bar coverage over injuries incurred during sports practice. Those 

plain and unambiguous texts control. Underwriters and FFIC concede that Kentucky courts have 

not embraced their purpose-based argument. 

 

1 CIC’s policy also includes the Colleges or Schools Limitation Endorsement, which contains nearly-identical text. 

It provides: “This insurance does not apply to . . . ‘[b]odily injury’ . . . to any person while . . . practicing for or 

participating in any contest or exhibition of an athletic or sports nature . . . .” The analysis for this Endorsement is 

the same as the analyses for the other sports-participants exclusions.

2 Underwriters and FFIC direct their argument to Travelers’s Athletic Participants Exclusion, but the argument also 

applies to CIC’s Sports Participants Exclusion.

 Case: 16-5143 Document: 26-2 Filed: 09/13/2016 Page: 3
No. 16-5143, Underwriters Safety & Claims, Inc. v. Travelers Prop. Cas. Co.

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The two cases that plaintiffs cite do not support their reliance on the exclusion’s purpose. 

The Oregon court in Leach, applying a provision that excluded coverage over injuries suffered 

while “practicing for . . . any sports or athletic contest,” relied on the purpose of the practice, but 

not on the purpose of the exclusion. Leach v. Scottsdale Indem. Co., 323 P.3d 337, 340–45 (Or. 

Ct. App. 2014). Similarly, the Montana court in Mountain States, which involved a jockey who 

was injured when stray dogs attacked while he was exercising a horse, interpreted the 

exclusion’s text, “practicing for . . . any contest or exhibition,” to convey a narrow meaning of 

“practice,” and only incidentally suggested that the “purpose” of the sports-participants exclusion 

in that case was to exclude risks that are “normally encountered” in horseracing. Mountain 

States Mutual Cas. Co. v. Ne. N.M. Fair Ass’n, 508 P.2d 588, 589, 592 (N.M. 1973). That text—

“practicing for” a contest or exhibition—is not in Travelers’s Athletic Participants Exclusion; the 

two cases simply do not apply to Travelers’s policy. CIC’s Sports Participants Exclusion does 

include that text, “practicing for or participating in any contest or exhibition of an athletic or 

sports nature,” but in any event, Passfield was undeniably “practicing” when he collapsed and 

died. Passfield attended the lacrosse practice as a member of Bellarmine’s lacrosse team; 

Bellarmine’s lacrosse coach convened the team to practice for its future games; and Passfield 

was running timed quarter-miles to condition for lacrosse games.

Plaintiffs rely primarily on the fact that Travelers’s insurance policy—although not CIC’s 

insurance policy—includes the XTEND Endorsement, which “broadens coverage” to certain 

medical-malpractice injuries. But Travelers’s Athletic Participants Exclusion trumps its XTEND 

Endorsement. The XTEND Endorsement broadens the policy’s definition of “bodily injury” to 

include “Incidental Medical Malpractice Injury,” which comprises injuries “arising out of the 

rendering of, or [the] failure to render,” four enumerated medical services. The Athletic 

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No. 16-5143, Underwriters Safety & Claims, Inc. v. Travelers Prop. Cas. Co.

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Participants Exclusion applies more broadly: “This insurance does not apply to ‘bodily injury’ to 

any person engaged in athletic, exercise, or sports activities . . . .” While the Endorsement 

broadens the policy’s definition of “bodily injury,” the Exclusion applies to the amended 

insurance policy as a whole. 

This conclusion makes it unnecessary for us to address limiting language within the 

XTEND Endorsement, upon which the district court relied. Underwriters Safety & Claims, Inc. 

v. Travelers Prop. Cas. Co., 152 F. Supp. 3d 933, 936–37 (W.D. Ky. Jan. 22, 2016). We may of 

course affirm on grounds not relied upon by the district court. Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc. 

v. American Eagle Outfitters, Inc., 280 F.3d 619, 629 (6th Cir. 2002). 

The judgment of the district court is affirmed.

 Case: 16-5143 Document: 26-2 Filed: 09/13/2016 Page: 5