Opinion ID: 2617139
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Is Personal Injury Coverage Limited to Intentional Acts of the Insureds?

Text: The insurers contend, additionally, that the personal injury coverage provided in the policies in question covers a type f conduct that is far removed from that alleged here. Br. of Certain Insurers at 17. Specifically, they assert that because each offense that is listed in the three groups of offenses set forth in the personal injury coverage provisions involves an intentional but intangible injury of a personal nature (e.g., damage to reputation from defamation, deprivation of the liberty interest from false imprisonment, etc.), it cannot include an action to recover for environmental pollution even if the claim falls within a claim for trespass, nuisance, or interference. Br. of Certain Insurers at 17. Even if we assume, as the insurers aver, that the gravamen of the claims that were made against the County were for bodily injury or property damage caused by an occurrence, the hallmark of which is an accident ... an `unusual, unexpected, and unforeseen happening,' the argument fails. Br. of Certain Insurers at 17 (citation omitted). That is so because, as we explain hereafter, the insurers' assertion that the offenses listed in the personal injury coverage involve intentionally inflicted injury does not hold up. The insurers' first argument in support of that proposition is that because the term offenses is used in the personal coverage provisions, it is axiomatic that only intentional acts are covered. The insurers are incorrect. Although the term offenses is apparently not defined in any of the policies, one dictionary definition of offense is an act of breaking the law; sin; crime; transgression. Reply Br. of PI. at 23 (quoting WEBSTER'S DELUXE UNABRIDGED DICTIONARY 1242 (2d ed.1979)). In Webster's Third New International Dictionary 1566 (3d ed.1986), that word is similarly defined as a sin, transgression, misdeed, and an infraction of law. As Kitsap County correctly observes, there are many laws that one may violate without intending to do so. In our judgment, the meaning that the insurers would subscribe to the term offenses is not one that would occur to an average purchaser of insurance. The insurers' other argument is that because all of the enumerated offenses in groups A, B, and C of the personal injury coverage are intentional torts, it follows that only intentional torts are covered. This argument also fails because all of the enumerated offenses are not intentional torts. We have held, for example, that a private figure need only show negligence on the part of a defendant in order to maintain a defamation action. LaMon v. Butler, 112 Wash.2d 193, 770 P.2d 1027 (1989). In reaching the conclusion that the personal injury provisions are not limited to intentional acts, we are not unmindful that the New York Court of Appeals reached a different conclusion in County of Columbia v. Continental Ins. Co., 83 N.Y.2d 618, 634 N.E.2d 946, 612 N.Y.S.2d 345 (1994). In that case the court held: that the coverage under the personal injury endorsement provision in question was intended to reach only purposeful acts undertaken by the insured or its agents. Evidence that only purposeful acts were to fall within the purview of the personal injury endorsement is provided, in part, by examining the types of torts enumerated in the endorsement in addition to wrongful entry, eviction and invasion: false arrest, detention, imprisonment, malicious prosecution, defamation and invasion of privacy by publication. Read in the context of these other enumerated torts, the provision here could not have been intended to cover the kind of indirect and incremental harm that results to property interests from pollution. County of Columbia, 612 N.Y.S.2d 345, 634 N.E.2d at 950. Despite our respect for that court, we find ourselves more attracted to the view of the dissenting judge at the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court who indicated that he could not subscribe to the narrow construction given to the terms wrongful entry and other invasion of the right of private occupancy, and, thus, concluded that a claim of continuing trespass falls within the offenses contained in the personal injury portions of the policies there in question. County of Columbia v. Continental Ins. Co., 189 A.D.2d 391, 396, 595 N.Y.S.2d 988 (1993) (Crews, J., dissenting).