Court Opinion

ID: 9483450
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:20:45.383447+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:38.082987
License: Public Domain

RALPH B. OUY, Jr., Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Although the case is a close one, I agree with Park-Ohio’s characterization of the Fleenor action. The Fleenor complaint does not allege that Tocco’s furnaces themselves created any pollution. Instead, the lawsuit alleges, inter alia, that Tocco is liable because Tocco knew that the depot would use the furnaces to burn rubber and Tocco failed to warn the workers about the hazards of burning rubber.1
I am aware of only three published decisions that have involved attempts to apply the pollution exclusion in similar contexts. In each of the three cases, the court refused to apply the pollution exclusion to claims against an insured who no longer controlled its product. In Autotronic, 456 N.Y.S.2d 504, the plaintiff-employee alleged that the insured was liable for negligently building the service station, while the actual polluting activity was the day-today operation of the service station. Id. at 506.
In Grinnell Mutual Reinsurance Co. v. Wasmuth, 432 N.W.2d 495 (Minn.Ct.App.1988), the insured had installed home insulation that allegedly emitted irritating vapors. The court concluded that the insured would reasonably expect the pollution exclusion to limit coverage for activities such as hazardous waste dumping, not for installing building materials in a home. Id. at 499.
Finally, in Continental Casualty Co. v. Rapid-American Corp., 177 A.D.2d 61, 581 N.Y.S.2d 669 (1992), the court held that the pollution exclusion could not be used to exclude product liability claims against the insured asbestos manufacturer. The court concluded that the pollution exclusion did not “embrace the harm inflicted by a product fully and finally launched into the stream of commerce, and over which the manufacturer no longer exercises any control.” Id. 581 N.Y.S.2d at 673.
I find the reasoning of these cases persuasive. Home’s reading of the pollution exclusion would allow insurers to avoid defending any product liability case that fortuitously involves smoke, soot, fumes, liquids, or vapors. For example, under Home’s reading, the pollution exclusion would deny coverage to an automobile manufacturer for claims brought by motorists who had been injured, while in an automobile, by fumes from a defective exhaust system.
The title and the language of the exclusion belie such a reading. The title indicates that the exclusion applies only to “pollution,” not to every claim involving smoke or fumes. The last clause of the exclusion states that the exclusion applies only to emissions “into or upon land, the atmosphere or any water course or body of *1225water.” This language suggests that the exclusion applies to damage done by the release of pollutants into the environment, not to the type of location exposure at issue in the Fleenor lawsuit and in Auto-tronic, Wasmuth, and Rapid-American.
Even if I did not find the exclusion to be ambiguous as applied to the Fleenor action, the fact that courts from other jurisdictions have found the exclusion to be ambiguous in analogous contexts would compel me to reverse the judgment for Home. The Ohio Court of Appeals has explained:
Where the language of a clause used in an insurance contract is such that courts of numerous jurisdictions have found it necessary to construe it and in such construction have arrived at conflicting conclusions as to the correct meaning, intent, and effect thereof, the question whether such clause is ambiguous ceases to be an open one.
Equitable Life Ins. Co. v. Gerwick, 50 Ohio App. 277, 197 N.E. 923, 925 (1934); see also George H. Olmsted & Co. v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 118 Ohio St. 421, 161 N.E. 276, 277-78 (1928).
I conclude both from the language of the pollution exclusion and from the decisions of courts in other jurisdictions that the exclusion is ambiguous as applied to the Fleenor action. Since Ohio law requires that ambiguities be strictly construed against the insurer, I would reverse the grant of summary judgment for Home and remand for further proceedings.2

. The Fleenor complaint alleges that Tocco and three other defendants manufactured induction furnaces that were used in the rubber denuding process. The plaintiffs allege that the furnace manufacturers are liable because the
furnaces in question were defective, unreasonably dangerous and not reasonably fit for their intended use ... and that Defendants failed to adequately warn the "workers” ... of the risks known to Defendants in association with the use of the furnaces.... [Defendants failed to give adequate warning, training, or other instructional information concerning the emission into the atmosphere of soot, smoke, fumes, dust and other particulates, known or such that should have been known ... to be carcinogenic and hazardous to the "workers'" health.... [T]he introduction into the stream of commerce of a defective product ... and the failure to warn ... rendered the furnaces unreasonably dangerous at the time it left Defendants' possession_
(Emphasis added).

. At a minimum, I would conclude that the summary judgment was premature. Plaintiffs, as plaintiffs often do in product liability cases, have pleaded very broadly. Until discovery forces them to elect what horse they intend to ride, I feel the insurance company has, at least, a duty to defend, even if it elects to do so under a reservation of rights.