Opinion ID: 422027
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Effect of the Employee and Workmen's Compensation Exclusions

Text: 25 The exclusion in question excludes bodily injury to employees of the Insured. Allstate and the district court read this language to mean employees of Groveton so as to exclude suits for bodily injury by co-employees. We disagree. 26 Although the policy defines insured to mean any person or organization qualifying as Insured in the 'Persons Insured' provision (emphasis added), the definitions section also provides that [t]he insurance afforded applies separately to each Insured against whom claim is made or suit is brought (emphasis added). We must therefore read the policy and exclusions as if Harding and MacDonald each had a policy of his own, substituting their names for the term Insured. Reading the policy in this way, it is evident that the exclusion is ineffective to exclude coverage here, for Morehouse was an employee of Groveton, but he was not an employee of either Harding or MacDonald. Since the policy only excludes bodily injury to employees of the Insured (i.e., employees of Harding and MacDonald, the particular insureds against whom the Morehouse claims were brought), the exclusion is inapplicable. 27 If the result seems anomalous, the short answer is that Allstate could easily have limited coverage more narrowly by excluding bodily injury to employees of named insureds from the coverage of executive officers, just as it did in the employee endorsement with respect to their coverage as employees. See note 8 supra. Since it did not, Allstate has made its bed and now must lie in it. Under New Hampshire law, we must construe the policy against the insurer wherever, as here, the policy is ambiguous or separate clauses lend themselves to conflicting interpretations. Young, supra, 120 N.H. at 884, 424 A.2d at 206-07.