Opinion ID: 146624
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 13

Heading: Property Ownership and Legal Right to Use

Text: That their warranty deed granted the Kings a limited easement within the gated Deer Park development would be of paramount significance if the Connecticut Supreme Court were to adopt the rule of decision announced in Uguccioni v. U.S. Fidelity & Guaranty Co., 408 Pa.Super. 511, 597 A.2d 149 (1991), which held that an ATV accident that occurred on a private roadway within the insured's private housing development was covered under the insured's homeowner's policy. The Uguccioni court observed that [t]hese streets, it would seem, are private property used by the insureds in connection with their insured residence. As such, the street on which [the ATV accident occurred] was an `insured location.' 408 Pa.Super. at 513, 597 A.2d at 150. Uguccioni construed the policy term insured location as broad enough to include roads in a private development which are available for use in achieving access to the insured residence.  408 Pa.Super. at 514, 597 A.2d at 150 (emphasis added); see also Coppa, 494 N.W.2d at 506 (distinguishing approaches or easements of ingress to or egress from the property as covered by homeowner's policy, as opposed to an adjacent public field where ATV accident occurred). At the outermost limit of this approach lies Northern Security Insurance Co. v. Rossitto, 171 Vt. 580, 583, 762 A.2d 861, 865 (2000). There, the Vermont Supreme Court considered an exception to an ATV exclusion in a homeowner's policy, and found that the policy term insured location unambiguously encompasses [the insured's] right-of-way. Id. Again, then, even if the legal right approach is adopted, its application requires a further determination of whether merely showing the existence of a property right in the accident situs is sufficient to secure policy coverage as an insured location, or whether the legal right must be further conditioned on it being a right for purposes only of assuring access to the residence premisesany other interest being irrelevant. See discussion of integral use approach, infra.