Court Opinion

ID: 9791003
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:02:52.132777+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:33.066626
License: Public Domain

DISSENTING OPINION OP
LEVINSON, J.,
WITH WHOM MARUMOTO, J., JOINS
I dissent.
The question involved in this case is not whether Sea Life Park and its negligent employee are liable to the plaintiff but whether their liability is covered by a particular insurance policy.
The words of the insurance contract are clear in ex-*98eluding any liability on the part of the insurer owing to accidents arising out of “the ownership, maintenance, operation, use, loading or unloading of (1) watercraft if the accident occurs away from premises owned by, rented to or controlled by the named insured. . . .” It is conceded that the accident occurred at sea away from the insured’s premises. Therefore, there is no coverage “except with respect to operations performed by independent contractors.” (Emphasis added.) In the present case an employee of the insured was at the helm of the watercraft towing the independent contractor. The actual operation was being performed by the employee and it was the independent contractor who was injured, not a third party. For those reasons I would deny the insured recovery under this insurance contract.
While I would agree that “[t]he insurer must be held responsible for achieving certainty and clarity in the field of insurance,” Law v. Hawaiian Life Insurance Co., 51 Haw. 288, 292, 459 P.2d 195, 198 (1969), I do not think that we should stretch the language of an insurance contract beyond the limits of common sense and general understanding to grant recovery under an insurance policy that clearly does not cover the risk to the independent contractor himself. In order to determine if there is any ambiguity to be construed against the insurer, the test to be used in reading the words of an insurance contract is what a reasonably prudent person applying for insurance would have understood the words to mean. General Casualty Co. of America v. Azteca Films, Inc., 278 F.2d 161, 167 (9th cir. 1960). In searching for an ambiguity We must do so through the eyes of this reasonable man, not as lawyers schooled in techniques of microscopic verbal analysis. At bottom the question involved in the present case is whether there is some reasonable basis for doubt in the language of the exception to the exclusion in the contract. If there *99were any doubt, the insured should win. If there is no such reasonable doubt, the insurer must prevail.
I find no reasonable basis for doubt in reading this insurance contract. It appears clear to me that the insured, Sea Life Park, was covered for operations performed by an independent contractor which would injure parties other than the independent contractor. In certain situations the liability producing acts of an independent contractor can be imputed to the principal on the basis of respondant superior, thus making the principal liable. Restatement (Second) of Agency §§ 214, 250, 251 (1958). Where it is the independent contractor who is injured, his injury does not involve any vicarious liability on the part of the principal. This must be compared to an injury to a third party who might reach the principal because of the negligence of the independent contractor or his agents. It is the latter risk that is contemplated by the clause in issue in this case.
The majority cites a great many cases in support of the proposition that the causative factor between work done by an independent contractor and an injured party is of no legal significance. - However well reasoned such cases may be when the question is how a court should construe ambiguous terms such as “arising from,” “arising out of” or “restricted to,” they are inapposite in the present case. The majority’s focus on the words “respect to” in the contract is wholly misplaced. The case, as I see it, must turn on the court’s evaluation of the risk which was covered by the policy. In my opinion, this risk was injury to third parties giving rise to vicarious liability on the part of the employer-principal. Reading the exception to the exclusion as I do, I must respectfully dissent from the conclusion of the majority. I would affirm the lower court’s ruling.