Opinion ID: 76012
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Insured means:

Text: 23 ... 24 3. Employees of the organization while acting within their scope of duties while conducting the business of the organization.... 25 Shrader and Livingston emphasize that civil rights violations frequently involve conduct outside of the scope of a police officer's duties. Thus, Shrader and Livingston argue that the policy's language providing coverage for [v]iolation of constitutional/civil rights, when read together with its definition of insured with its limiting scope of duties language creates conflict between the provisions and creates an inherent ambiguity within the policy which must be construed for the insured's benefit. 26 Alternatively, Shrader and Livingston argue that limiting coverage for civil rights violations only to those civil rights violations that occur in the scope of an employee's duties would result in illusory coverage. Shrader and Livingston contend that most, if not all, civil rights violations occur outside the scope of an employee's duties. Therefore, according to Shrader and Livingston, denying coverage will result in an exclusion or limitation essentially swallowing up the purported coverage which, under Alabama law, violates the doctrine of illusory coverage. See Industrial Chem. & Fiberglass Corp. v. Hartford Acc. & Indem. Co., 475 So.2d 472, 478-79 (Ala.1985) (noting that the law cannot countenance... illusory `coverage' in the context of construing ambiguous policies); see also Titan Indem. Co. v. Newton, 39 F.Supp.2d 1336, 1344-45 (N.D.Ala.1999) (noting that Alabama recognizes [the illusory coverage doctrine] that the language or interpretation of an ambiguous provision by an insurance company may be so tortured as to result in `illusory' coverage). C. EMCC's Contentions 27 In response, EMCC argues that Shrader and Livingston cannot recover under the linebacker policy because Mallard and Gilliland cannot show that they were entitled to coverage as insureds as defined in the policy. 4 In making this assertion, EMCC suggests that Mallard and Gilliland are excluded from coverage because the linebacker policy defines an insured as employees of the [City] while acting within their scope of duties while conducting the business of the [City], (emphasis added), and that the act of sexual assault is always outside the scope of a law enforcement officer's duties. 5 28 It is a well-settled principle of Alabama law that sexual assault lies outside the scope of an employee's duties. Doe v. Swift, 570 So.2d 1209, 1211 (Ala.1990) (citing numerous cases in which Alabama courts held that sexual misconduct was outside the scope of employment). In defining the outer limits of the scope of employment, the Alabama Supreme Court in Doe stated that `[t]he conduct of the employee ... must not be impelled by motives that are wholly personal, or to gratify his own feelings or resentment, but should be in promotion of the business of his employment.' Id. (quoting Solmica of the Gulf Coast, Inc. v. Braggs, 285 Ala. 396, 232 So.2d 638, 642 (1970)) (emphasis in original). 29 Moreover, the Alabama Supreme Court previously has held that an insurance policy containing a definition of insured similar to that at issue in the EMCC policy did not cover sexual assault by an employee of a private company. In Capital Alliance Insurance Co. v. Thorough-Clean, Inc., the Alabama Supreme Court stated that where an insurance policy defined an insured as `employees ... but only for acts within the line and scope of their employment,' an employee from a private company who raped another employee d[id] not qualify for coverage under the terms of the policy, because he would have been acting outside the line and scope of his employment in raping. 639 So.2d 1349, 1351 (Ala.1994). However, the Alabama Supreme Court's discussion in Capital Alliance neither alludes to the insurance policy at issue covering civil rights violations nor addresses the construction of a policy containing coverage for civil rights violations but restricting coverage to employees acting within their scope of duties. See generally Capital Alliance Ins. Co. v. Thorough-Clean, Inc., 639 So.2d 1349 (Ala.1994). Thus, the two clauses at issue here were not addressed in Capital Alliance.