Court Opinion

ID: 9694703
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 17:51:57.03748+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:04.502732
License: Public Domain

SABERS, Justice
(concurring specially).
Athough I agree with the majority based on the fact that the trial court found that Wertz intentionally caused his vehicle to collide with the parked semi, the situation would be different if the trial court had found that Wertz was attempting to evade his pursuers.
The majority relies on City of Fort Pierre v. United Fire & Cas. Co., 463 N.W.2d 845 (S.D.1990) and Justice Wuest’s minority writing in Tri-State Co. of Minnesota v. Bollinger, 476 N.W.2d 697 (S.D.1991). I stand firm on my writing in Bollinger, 476 N.W.2d at 702-03, on Duty to Defend and Duty to Pay, which Justice Amundson joined and on my writing in Fort Pierre, which Justice Henderson, the majority author of Bollinger, joined, on the applicability of “Exclusion(s) for intentional loss” as follows:
*642An insurance policy exclusion for a loss caused intentionally by an insured applies only when the insurance company is able to show that the insured acted for the purpose of causing the loss. See Rajspic v. Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co., 110 Idaho 729, 718 P.2d 1167 (1986); Horace Mann Ins. Co. v. Independent School Dist. No. 656, 355 N.W.2d 413 (Minn.1984). That is, the loss itself must be intended before the exclusion will apply. As explained by the court in Allstate Ins. Co. v. Steinemer, 723 F.2d 873 (11th Cir.1984):
Under the majority rule the exclusion applies if the insured intended to do a particular act, and intended to do some harm, even if the harm actually done was radically different from that intend-ed_ On the other hand, an “intentional injury” exclusion will not apply if the insured intentionally does an act, but has no intent to commit harm, even if the act involves the foreseeable consequences of great harm or even amounts to gross or culpable negligence.
Id. at 875 (citation omitted); see also Farmers Ins. Group v. Sessions, 100 Idaho 914, 918, 607 P.2d 422, 426 (1980) (“We follow the great weight of authority and hold that for this ‘intentional tort’ exclusion to operate the insurance company must be able to show that its insured acted ... for the purpose of causing injury in the person or property in which it resulted.”). This rule was applied by the Oklahoma Supreme Court in a ease involving policy language almost identical to that at issue here. In Lumbermens Mut. Ins. Co., Mansfield, Ohio v. Blackburn, 477 P.2d 62, 64 (Okl.1970), the court considered an exclusion for “bodily injury or property damage caused intentionally by or at the direction of the Insured” (emphasis omitted), and concluded:
[T]he majority of the better-reasoned opinions in cases involving insurance policy exclusion provisions with language like the one involved here, or wording of similar import, require that the intention of the person, whose act caused the injury, ‘must be to inflict the injury actually inflicted.... ’
Id. at 65. In short, the intention must be to cause the loss as well as to do the act.
The trial court found that the City’s actions were not undertaken with any intent to cause a loss. As the trial court explained: “The City was only doing that which it believed it had a right to do within the law.” Although the City acted intentionally to discharge the fill material into the Ft. Pierre slough, it did not intend to cause any harm by that conduct. The City did not intend to wrongfully discharge the fill without a necessary permit, because it believed a permit was not necessary. In fact, the City was correct in so thinking and the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals so held. Contrary to the majority’s conclusion, the exclusion for intentional loss does not apply to this case.
City of Fort Pierre, 463 N.W.2d at 850. Therefore, if the insurer can prove that the collision and injury were intended, as these findings support, it can avoid liability on the coverage question.
Accordingly, this collision was not caused by accident, but by intention. Clearly, the injuries to Dawnelle and the damages to Anderson’s truck are included within the intentions of Wertz to cause the collision. These injuries to Dawnelle and the damages to Anderson’s truck were reasonably intended or expected “by [Wertz,] the insured.” Therefore, even under the test in Bollinger, this result would be the same — no liability to the insurer. Therefore, the frequent reliance on the dissenting opinion of Justice Wuest in Bollinger is confusing and could produce future error. In addition, the second example used in footnote 2, from the Vermont Mutual Insurance Company case, is too simplistic because the factfinder must usually determine whether the injuries and damages were reasonably intended or expected by the insured. Here, they were. In Bollinger, they may or may not have been reasonably intended or expected by the insured.