Court Opinion

ID: 9854520
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:08:33.313406+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:23:08.086223
License: Public Domain

Weltner, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
The opinion of the Court of Appeals recites that the insured, C. W. Belt, “was a chronically heavy drinker who, apparently without provocation, shot and killed Kevin [his son] and Susan Belt [his daughter-in-law] and then killed himself.” State Farm &c. Co. v. Morgan, 185 Ga. App. 377 (364 SE2d 62) (1987).
The brief filed on behalf of the surviving child contains the following statement of fact:
On March 23, 1983, Kevin Ward Belt, Susan Belt and their five-year-old son, Gregory Belt, were temporarily residing with C. W. Belt and his wife, Ruby Belt, in their homeplace located on Camp Highland Road in Smyrna, Georgia. On said date as C. W. Belt walked from inside his house he confronted his daughter-in-law and his grandson, Gregory Belt. Susan and Gregory were sitting in her automobile which was in the Belt driveway. Susan was in the driver’s seat and Gregory was in the front passenger’s seat. Without apparently saying a word, C. W. Belt shot Susan Marie Belt once, killing her. Immediately Kevin Ward Belt came out of the house and C. W. Belt shot Kevin Ward Belt once, killing him. C. W. Belt turned and placed the gun to his own head and killed himself with one shot. The grandchild, Kevin Gregory Belt, being frightened, jumped out of the car and ran through the woods seeking safety from the rampage and carnage that was occurring.
While the record establishes that C. W. Belt was intoxicated at the time of the killings, it provides no clarity on what took place between the parties immediately before the killings. It is clear, however, that Belt did not harm or attempt to harm his five-year-old grandson. Had he wished, he easily could have killed him immediately after killing his daughter-in-law.
Manifestly, one who shoots and kills his son and daughter-in-law without apparent provocation, spares the life of a young grandson, and then kills himself has inflicted “bodily injury. . .which is expected or intended.”1 And just as Belt intended not to harm or kill *278his grandson, the only reasonable interpretation of his conduct is that he intended to kill his son and his daughter-in-law. Any other holding falls within the realm of conjecture, and would license a jury to base its verdict upon mere surmise.
Decided June 3, 1988.
Swift, Currie, McGhee & Hiers, Stephen L. Cotter, Lynn M. Roberson, for appellant.
Roy E. Barnes, Mike Treadaway, Robert E. Flournoy III, for appellee.
These factual elements being without dispute, the two homicides committed by the insured, as a matter of law, should be excluded from coverage under the policy.
I am authorized to state that Chief Justice Marshall and Justice Bell join in this dissent.

 The policy of insurance excluded coverage for “bodily injury or property damage which *278is expected or intended by the insured.”