Opinion ID: 2419816
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Heading: Mid-Century's policy states:

Text: We will pay damages which a covered person is legally entitled to recover from the owner or operator of an uninsured [or underinsured] motor vehicle because of bodily injury sustained by a covered person, or property damage, caused by an accident. The owner's or operator's liability for these damages must arise out of the ownership, maintenance or use of the uninsured [or underinsured] motor vehicle. The parties' sole dispute concerning the applicability of this provision is over whether Lindsey's injuries were caused by an accident arising out of the use of Metzer's truck. Taking each of Mid-Century's arguments in turn, we consider, first, whether Lindsey's injuries were caused by an accident, and second, whether Metzer's liability for Lindsey's injuries [arose] out of the ... use of Metzer's truck.
Mid-Century's policy does not define accident, but we have held that an injury is accidental if from the viewpoint of the insured, [it is] not the natural and probable consequence of the action or occurrence which produced the injury; or in other words, if the injury could not reasonably be anticipated by insured, or would not ordinarily follow from the action or occurrence which caused the injury. [4] An injury caused by voluntary and intentional conduct is not an accident just because the result or injury may have been unexpected, unforeseen and unintended. [5] On the other hand, the mere fact that an actor intended to engage in the conduct that gave rise to the injury does not mean that the injury was not accidental. [6] Rather, both the actor's intent and the reasonably foreseeable effect of his conduct bear on the determination of whether an occurrence is accidental. [A]n effect that `cannot be reasonably anticipated from the use of [the means that produced it], an effect which the actor did not intend to produce and which he cannot be charged with the design of producing, is produced by accidental means.' [7] Metzer's son intended only to gain entry to the truck. He did not intend to cause the shotgun to discharge or Lindsey to be injured, nor was it reasonably foreseeable that either consequence would result from the boy's trying to enter the pickup through the rear window. Metzer's son was not playing with the gun or acting recklessly. There is no evidence that he even knew it was loaded. His injuring Lindsey was an accident. Mid-Century argues, however, that by accident the policy means auto accident or motor vehicle accident, as evidenced by the use of the latter phrases throughout the policy. An auto accident, Mid-Century argues, requires a collision. Assuming that auto accident is a more restrictive term in the policy than accident, and that a fair construction of the policy as a whole requires that the restriction be implied in the uninsured/underinsured motorist provision where it does not appear, we do not agree that the term excludes the occurrence here. In Farmers Texas County Mutual Insurance Co. v. Griffin we held that `[t]he term auto accident refers to situations where one or more vehicles are involved with another vehicle, object, or person.' [8] A drive-by shooting, we concluded, was not an auto accident. [9] The opinion we quoted, in the case of State Farm Mutual Insurance Co. v. Peck, concluded that a dog bite inflicted while the victim was in a car was not an auto accident. [10] Nothing in the language or holding of either case suggests that an auto accident requires a collision or excludes occurrences like the one in this case. We therefore conclude that Lindsey's injuries were caused by an accident within the meaning of Metzer's policy.
For liability to arise out of the use of a motor vehicle, a causal connection or relation must exist between the accident or injury and the use of the motor vehicle. [11] The use required is of the vehicle qua vehicle, rather than simply as an article of property. [12] Whether a person is using a vehicle as a vehicle depends not only on his conduct but on his intent. [13] Thus, in LeLeaux v. Hamshire-Fannett Independent School District we held that if a vehicle is only the locational setting for an injury, the injury does not arise out of any use of the vehicle. [14] In that case, a high school student jumped up from where she had been sitting in the open rear doorway of an empty school bus and hit her head on the door frame. We explained: The bus in this case was not in operation; it was parked, empty, with the motor off. The driver was not aboard; there were no students aboard. The bus was not `doing or performing a practical work'; it was not being `put or [brought] into action or service'; it was not being `employ[ed] or appl[ied] to a given purpose'. The bus was nothing more than the place where Monica happened to injure herself. [15] We reached a similar conclusion in National Union Fire Insurance Co. v. Merchants Fast Motor Lines, Inc ., a case involving claims and circumstances more closely related to the case now before us. The issue there was whether a sufficient connection existed between a truck driver's alleged negligent discharge of a firearm, striking a passenger in a van traveling alongside, and the operation of the truck, to invoke the truck insurer's duty to defend the passenger's claim against the truck driver. [16] We concluded that while defendant was clearly using his truck as a truck, plaintiff failed to allege even a remote causal relationship between that use and the shooting. [17] We reasoned that the mere fact that an automobile is the situs of the accident is not enough to establish the necessary nexus between the use and the accident to warrant the conclusion that the accident resulted from such use. [18] Two well-established treatises on insurance law, Couch on Insurance and Appleman's Insurance Law and Practice, distill from numerous cases throughout the country the following test for determining whether an injury arises out of the use of a motor vehicle for purposes of auto liability insurance coverage: For an injury to fall within the use coverage of an automobile policy (1) the accident must have arisen out of the inherent nature of the automobile, as such, (2) the accident must have arisen within the natural territorial limits of an automobile, and the actual use must not have terminated, (3) the automobile must not merely contribute to cause the condition which produces the injury, but must itself produce the injury. [19] Two Texas courts of appeals have used these factors to conclude that a drive-by shooting does not arise out of the use of a vehicle. [20] We agree that the factors, though unavoidably abstract, are helpful in focusing the analysis, although we neither read the treatises as proposing an absolute test, nor do we regard the factors as such. The third factor is especially troublesome because of the difficulty in many circumstances of deciding what role a vehicle, as opposed to other things, played in producing a particular injury, as shown by the cases cited by Couch and Appleman. [21] The third factor does not create this difficulty, however, but simply exposes it in the arising-out-of-use test for coverage. The degree of the vehicle's involvement in the production of the injury is a difficult factor to judge, as the cases cited illustrate. Fundamentally, of course, the issue is what coverage is intended to be provided by insurers and acquired and shared by premium-payers. A drive-by shooting involves a vehicle only incidentally. The shooter could be standing still and accomplish the same result. In such a situation, even if the first two factors of the Appleman/Couch test were satisfied, the third could not be because the vehicle's role in the occurrence is minimal as compared with the shooter's. The vehicle is the mere situs of an incident that could have occurred anywhere. [22] The shooting has nothing to do with the use of the vehicle as a vehicle. Applying all these considerations to the facts of the case before us, we conclude that Lindsey's injury arose out of the use of the Metzer truck as a matter of law. Metzer's son's sole purpose was to gain entry into the truck to retrieve his clothing. His conduct did not stray from that purpose. He did not play with the gun, or try to shoot it, or load or unload it, or purposefully handle it in any way. His contact with the gun was entirely inadvertent. Although the boy was attempting an unorthodox method of entry, it was not an unexpected or unnatural use of the vehicle, given his size, the fact that the vehicle was locked, and the nature of boys. It was the boy's efforts to enter the vehicle that directly caused the gun to discharge and Lindsey to become injured. Surely if the movement of the truck had caused the shotgun to discharge, there would be little question that the vehicle produced the injury. In such an accident, the vehicle would have more of a role than the Metzer truck had in the accident in this case, but not, we think, significantly more. Application of the third Appleman/Couch factor makes this a close case, but we think on balance the Metzer truck producedto use the factor's wordthe injury. Certainly, the truck was not merely the situs of activity, unrelated to any use of the truck that resulted in the accident. We believe this conclusion to be consistent with the majority of decisions in other jurisdictions in similar cases. In each case the court has attempted to assess the peculiar facts and circumstances that gave rise to the injury. [23] Generally, [i]f the discharge or incident could have occurred regardless of the vehicle, the courts seem to be consistent in holding there is no coverage. [24] Thus, if injury occurs when one is purposefully handling a gun in or around a vehicle, not for the purpose of placing the gun in or removing it from the vehicle, but such as playing with it or intentionally shooting it, there is no causal connection between the injury and the use of the vehicle; the vehicle is merely the situs of the injury and its use incidental to the injury-producing act. [25] But when the injury-producing act and its purposes are an integral part of the use of the vehicle as such, injury caused by discharging the gun has generally been held to arise out of use of the vehicle. [26] Several years ago, the Missouri Court of Appeals in Cameron Mutual Insurance Co. v. Ward attempted to categorize auto liability insurance coverage cases involving accidental firearm discharge based on the circumstances of the accident. [27] The court grouped the cases in five categories as follows. If injury occurs:  while the occupant of a vehicle is handling or toying with the gun, courts consistently deny coverage holding that the vehicle is the mere situs for the accident and no causal connection exists between the discharge of the gun and the inherent use of the vehicle.  while a person is loading the gun into or unloading the gun from the vehicle, courts generally find coverage.  while using part of a vehicle as a gun rest for the purpose of firing a weapon, courts split, with the majority of cases denying coverage because a gun rest is not an inherent use of a vehicle.  while the gun is resting in or being removed from gun racks permanently attached to vehicles, a majority of cases allow coverage for resulting injuries on the rationale that the presence of the permanently attached gun rack in the vehicle establishes a significant causal connection between the accident and the use of the vehicle.  when the discharge occurs inside a vehicle caused by the actual movement or operation of the vehicle, courts afford coverage. [28] Ward has been cited in a number of jurisdictions. [29] In the gun rack category are five cases, four of which afford coverage. In Kohl v. Union Insurance Co., [30] the insured was lifting his rifle out of his Jeep's gun rack to unload and store it for the journey home from a hunting trip when the gun suddenly discharged, injuring two of his companions and killing a third. The court concluded that the accident was intimately related to the insured's use of the vehicle as transportation for the hunting trip. In two other cases courts concluded that the permanent attachment of a gun rack to the vehicle created a sufficient causal connection between use of the vehicle and the accidental discharge of a gun in the rack. In one, Transamerica Insurance Group v. United Pacific Insurance Co., [31] the passenger in a truck was removing his rifle's muzzle from the gun rack behind him when the trigger brushed against the rear bracket of the gun rack and the gun discharged, injuring the driver. In the other, Quarles v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., [32] the insured attempted to empty shells from a shotgun mounted in the gun rack of his pickup; the gun discharged, killing his companion. In the fourth case, Reliance Insurance Co. v. Walker, [33] a gun mounted in a pickup's gun rack discharged when the insured started his vehicle. The court concluded that the accident was related to the truck's frequent use of transporting rifles for hunting trips. We are aware of only one case involving a gun rack in which coverage was denied. In State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. v. Powell, [34] the insured drove with a companion to a park, where they met three friends in another vehicle. All five were socializing around the two vehicles, getting in and out and walking around, when a shotgun in the gun rack of the insured's vehicle suddenly discharged, killing one of the three who had come in the other vehicle. No evidence suggested human involvement in the shotgun's discharge. The court rejected the argument that the accident was related to the use of the vehicle simply because the gun rack was permanently attached. Instead, the court focused on what employment of the vehicle was being made and what the injured person was doing when he was injured, as well as his purpose and intent, in determining whether that person was in such position in relation to the vehicle to be injured in its `use'. [35] The court concluded that the truck was being used merely as a gathering place for friends and not for any enterprise usually associated with a vehicle. [36] Moreover, since the injured person had not been and did not intend to be a passenger in the insured's vehicle, the court concluded that his connection with the vehicle was too remote for his injury to have arisen from the use of the vehicle. [37] We agree with the court in Powell that a firearm discharge related to a gun rack does not arise out of the use of the vehicle merely because the gun rack is permanently attached. Rather, the purpose and circumstances of the injury-producing act are determinative. The vehicle in Powell was being used only as a gathering place and the gun discharged for no apparent reason; it was merely the situs for the accident and injury. By contrast, the injury-producing act in this casethe Metzer boy's entry into the truck to retrieve his clothinginvolved the use of the vehicle as a vehicle. Moreover, the boy's entry caused the gun's accidental discharge. We disagree, however, with the Powell court's emphasis on the victim's relation to the vehicle as a vehicle. While the victim's involvement with the vehicle is an important factor, it cannot alone determine whether the vehicle's use produced the accident. The more important factors are the actor's conduct and intent. The dissent argues that no material distinction can be drawn between the circumstances of this case and those of National Union Fire Insurance Co. v. Merchants Fast Motor Lines, Inc ., in which we held that allegations that a truck driver `negligently discharged a firearm and caused a bullet to strike' ... a passenger in a van traveling alongside were not facts within the scope of the vehicle insurance policy coverage, thereby triggering the insurer's duty to defend. [38] The dissent finds no principled distinction between the two cases because plaintiffs in both claim negligence. [39] But as we explained in National Union, in determining whether an accident is covered by an insurance policy, `the court must focus on the factual allegations that show the origin of the damages rather than on the legal theories alleged.' [40] There, the only connection between the vehicle and the alleged negligent shooting was that the person alleged to have negligently discharged the firearm was driving. Nothing in the victim's pleadings in that case reflected a connection between the truck and the shooting sufficient to invoke the truck insurer's duty to defend against the victim's claim. In the present case, the involvement of Metzer's truck in Lindsey's injury is more significant. Applying the Appleman/Couch test, and consistent with the results in most similar cases in other jurisdictions, we conclude that Lindsey's accident arose out of the use of Metzer's pickup.