Court Opinion

ID: 9705281
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:01:18.252059+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:09.618091
License: Public Domain

*217CLIFFORD, J.
dissenting.
The Court holds that Whitcomb’s charge of “humiliation” resulting from SL Industries’ alleged fraud triggered defendant American Motorists Insurance Company’s duty to defend. The fraud count in Whitcomb’s complaint charged SL Industries’ chief executive officer, John Instone, with conveying to Whit-comb, on behalf of their common employer, false representations that would induce Whitcomb to take early retirement, which, in reliance on those representations and to his detriment, he did.
The Comprehensive Catastrophe Liability Policy in this case, unlike the homeowner’s policy in Voorhees v. Preferred Mutual Insurance Co., 128 N.J. 165, 607 A.2d 1255 (1992), decided this day, protects the insured from liability for personal injuries, including “injury arising out of * * * humiliation.” The liability, however, must arise out of an “occurrence,” defined as “an accident.”
As in Voorhees, I do not view the operative conduct — here, Instone’s false representation to Whitcomb that his position of Group Vice-President was going to be eliminated — as in any sense amounting to an “accident.” Whatever that word means in the context of liability insurance coverage, see 7A J.A. Appleman, Insurance Law and Practice § 4492, at 14-19 (Berdal ed. 1979), it cannot include the intentional stringing-along of the insured’s fraud victim. The events alleged here do not come close to the basic definition of “accident” as “anything that happens or is the result of that which is unanticipated and takes place without the insured’s foresight or anticipation,” Appleman, supra, § 4492 at 17 (footnote omitted), or as “an undesigned, sudden, and unexpected event * * Ibid. My view on the meaning of “accident” coincides with that set forth in Judge Deighan’s dissent in Voorhees v. Preferred Mutual Insurance Co., 246 N.J.Super. 564, 581, 588-89, 588 A.2d 417 (App.Div.1992). Unable to improve on Judge Deighan’s correct statement of the law, I adopt it in full.
*218I would reverse the judgment of the Appellate Division and reinstate the judgment of the Law Division.
For affirmance and remandment — Chief Justice WILENTZ; and Justices HANDLER, POLLOCK, O’HERN, GARIBALDI and STEIN — 6.
For reversal and reinstatement — Justice CLIFFORD — 1.