Opinion ID: 4486994
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Chavez’s Complaint

Text: With all of this in mind, we now turn to whether allegations in the underlying complaint, and not extrinsic evidence, plausibly demonstrated coverage for Chavez’s injuries. To establish that the complaint did, it must have alleged (1) Whicker was covered in her capacity as a driver of the covered vehicle when she caused the accident and (2) the damage itself is the sort of damage covered by the insurance policy. We can dispose of the second item quickly. The Arizona policy covers the sort of automobile collision presented in this case. We turn, then, to the first item: whether the complaint properly and plausibly identified Whicker as an insured, i.e. as a person who could properly claim coverage for the type of incident that occurred. The policy includes as insureds, inter alia: (1) the named insureds or their family members and (2) “[a]ny person using [the named insureds’] covered auto with the express or implied permission of” the named insureds. App. at 52. It continues: “No person shall be -8- considered an insured if that person uses a vehicle without the permission of the owner or uses the vehicle as a converter.” Id. Because Whicker was not named in the relevant policy, simply mentioning her name would not automatically satisfy the requirement that the insured be identified as an insured. Still, Whicker could have been identified as an insured by a statement that her permissive use of the covered vehicle made her an insured for these intents and purposes. But Chavez’s complaint did not directly allege that Whicker was an insured under the policy. In relevant part, the complaint only stated: “Defendant Marlena Whicker . . . is an individual and resident of Adams County, State of Colorado.” App. at 33. It did not identify her as a covered driver. Nor did it state her address, which might have linked her to the named insured. Nowhere in the complaint did Chavez identify the vehicle that Whicker was driving such that she might have at least demonstrated the defendant was driving a covered vehicle. The return of service provided to Arizona also failed to identify the address at which both Whicker and the named insured resided. See App. at 36, 82. By naming a named insured, listing his address, or identifying a covered vehicle, Chavez might have raised the inference that Whicker was a permissive, insured user—an inference upon which Chavez relies heavily. At the very least, including the named insured’s address might have put Arizona on notice as to which policy might be at issue. -9- Because of these deficiencies in the complaint, Chavez’s suit against Whicker failed to create a duty for Arizona to defend her. Without extrinsic evidence, it is impossible to conclude from the complaint and policy alone that Whicker was an insured under the policy. And because an insured cannot rely on extrinsic evidence to show that a duty to defend exists, Chavez’s complaint failed to trigger any duty under Colorado’s complaint rule as the Supreme Court has explained it. See Compass, 984 P.2d at 615–16. Even if a complaint fails to trigger a duty to defend under the traditional formulation of the Colorado complaint rule, we have on occasion considered whether an exception to the rule exists. Although Colorado courts have yet to make any exception to the complaint rule, 1 we applied a modified version of the complaint rule in two cases. The first case was Pompa v. American Family Mutual Insurance Co., 520 F.3d 1139 (10th Cir. 2008). In that case, the insured defendant, Pompa, had pleaded guilty to murder and was being sued by his victim’s family for wrongful death. He requested that his insurer defend him in that suit, but the insurer refused, leaving Pompa without a defense. The court entered a default judgment against him much like the state court did in the suit underlying this one. Unable 1 The Colorado Supreme Court did briefly weigh in on the possibility of an exception in Hecla, but it made no exception in that case. See Hecla, 811 P.2d at 1089 n.10. -10- to satisfy the judgment, Pompa sued his insurer and assigned the unsatisfied plaintiffs rights to the bulk of any proceeds from this second suit. Pompa argued that the Colorado complaint rule precluded his insurer from considering his guilty plea when deciding whether to defend him in the wrongful death suit because his conviction was not stated within the four corners of the complaint. We rejected Pompa’s argument and recognized that “an indisputable fact that is not an element of either the cause of action or a defense in the underlying litigation” can be used to deny the duty to defend. Pompa, 520 F.3d at 1147. Chavez suggests that Pompa recognizes an actual knowledge exception to the complaint rule by which an insurer with actual knowledge of any claim not stated in a complaint must still provide a defense based on that extrinsic claim. But Pompa does not recognize such a broad exception to the complaint rule, and we doubt that the Colorado courts would do so. Nor does Chavez point to indisputable evidence that shows Whicker was a covered driver. Following Pompa, we also considered the complaint rule in AIMCO v. Nutmeg Insurance Co., 593 F.3d 1188 (10th Cir. 2010). In that case, we considered “whether an insurer, in determining its duty to defend, can disregard its knowledge of facts outside an individual complaint but contained in related complaints and known to the insurer.” AIMCO, 593 F.3d at 1193 (emphasis added). AIMCO had been a defendant in multiple suits arising out of a Ponzi -11- scheme orchestrated by an independent contractor in its employ. “Several of these suits alleged either AIMCO’s direct involvement with the scheme or liability for the actions of AIMCO’s independent contractor.” Id. at 1192. AIMCO requested that its insurer, Nutmeg, provide a defense, but Nutmeg declined because, when read in isolation, the individual complaints did not trigger coverage under the relevant policies. AIMCO then brought suit to enforce Nutmeg’s duty to defend. We concluded the rule would allow an insurer to consider facts it knows from parallel judicial proceeding in determining coverage. That scenario does not apply here because Arizona’s actual knowledge of Whicker’s status as a plausibly insured driver does not come from “parallel judicial proceedings” but from the insurance claims process. To the extent Chavez invites us to broaden the exceptions that we recognized in Pompa and AIMCO, we reject the invitation. In United Fire & Casualty Co. v. Boulder Plaza Residential, we concluded that courts should be wary of making an exception when interpreting Colorado’s complaint rule because “the responsibility of the federal courts, in matters of local law, is not to formulate the legal mind of the state, but merely to ascertain and apply it.” 633 F.3d at 961 (quoting Hardy Salt Co. v. S. Pac. Transp. Co., 501 F.2d 1156, 1163 (10th Cir. 1974)). We stated that this court should hesitate to recognize broad -12- exceptions when Colorado courts have not even recognized or ratified narrow ones: Neither the Colorado Supreme Court nor Colorado’s lower courts has thus far recognized any exceptions to this rule, nor has either ratified the two exceptions recognized by the Court in Pompa and AIMCO. We are therefore wary of embracing a third, much broader exception to the plain language of Colorado’s complaint rule absent clear authority from Colorado’s highest court. Id. As neither Pompa nor AIMCO required Arizona to consider the extrinsic evidence, the complaint rule applies.