Opinion ID: 1989584
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Indoor pollution.

Text: Judge Glickman reads the logic of our opinion to suggest that the absolute pollution exclusion can have no application to indoor pollution. We do not take this position. A simple illustration will suffice: If, for example, an insured produces carbon monoxide fumes during the manufacturing process, and if these fumes are then inhaled by persons on the premises, then the exclusion may well preclude liability on the part of the insurer for any injury suffered by those persons. [38] That situation differs markedly, however, from the present case, in which the insured is not an industrial polluter but, rather, the manager of an apartment house, and in which the plaintiff allegedly inhaled fumes which entered her unit directly from a heating device in the furnace room. This situation has no conceivable connection with waste dumps or government-mandated cleanup costs or with any of the other problems that led to the adoption of the absolute pollution exclusion. [39] Assuming that indoor industrial or similar pollution falls within the exclusion, we find it revealing that the courts in, inter alia, Andersen, Western Alliance, and Koloms have sensibly declined to apply the exclusion to the kind of situation presented here. [40] In a passage that is not especially understated, Judge Glickman says, page 346, post, that in its discussion of hypothetical indoor pollution at a manufacturing plant, the majority has been forced into a remarkable about-face, that the majority has implicitly repudiat[ed] virtually all the cases and premises on which it relies, and that [w]ith this concession, the majority's position collapses. To catalogue all that we see as inaccurate in our colleague's argument is not easy, but we note the following: 1. An about face, like beauty or its lack, is in the eye of the beholder, but so far as we are aware, there has been no change of direction of any kind in the majority opinion. Judge Glickman assuredly has not identified one, nor has he pointed to any contradiction between any statements in the majority opinion. 2. The majority has not repudiated the cases on which it relies. None of these cases involved the escape of carbon monoxide or other fumes on industrial premises during the manufacturing process, and neither the judges in the majority nor our dissenting colleague can divine, without the use of a crystal ball, how the courts on whose decisions we have relied would decide a purely hypothetical case not before them. Indeed, the questionperhaps not an easy onewhether the absolute pollution exclusion would apply in such circumstances, is not before us either, for the facts of the present case are, from the perspective of the purposes of the exclusion, altogether different from the hypothetical circumstances under discussion. 3. Surely, the reports of the demise or collapse of the majority's position are, to say the least, more than a little exaggerated. At bottom, Judge Glickman's argument is that if the escape of carbon monoxide fumes is within the exclusion anywhere, it is within the exclusion everywhere. This means, according to our colleague, that what happened to Ms. Richardson as a result of a malfunctioning apartment house furnace was, for purposes of the exclusion, identical to the pollution of an indoor industrial site as a result of the release of pollutants in the manufacturing process. Further, Judge Glickman suggests, the words of the exclusion are so unambiguous that if the second of these situations is pollution, then the first must be too. This, according to our colleague, should be evident to any reasonable person. Judge Glickman takes this position notwithstanding the text of the entire exclusion clause, its repeated focus on waste, detoxification and the like, and the essentially undisputed purpose for which the clause was adopted. In our view, numerous authorities cited in this opinion, including, inter alia, Western Alliance, 686 N.E.2d at 999, Reg'l Bank of Colo., 35 F.3d at 498, and the Brief for the Commissioner, quoted at page 333, reject this approach as contextless and unreasonable, and we cannot agree that anything in the majority opinion has caused these authorities to collapse.