Minkler v. Safeco Insurance Co. of America

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that “an exclusion of coverage for the intentional acts of ‘an insured,’ read in conjunction with a severability . . . clause like the one at issue here, creates an ambiguity which must be construed in favor of coverage”
• explaining a claim that “clearly depends upon allegations that [a defendant] herself committed an independent tort” was not “merely vicarious or derivative”
• mother had “no reason to expect that [her son’s] residence in her home, and his consequent status as an additional insured on her homeowners policies, would narrow her own coverage ... against claims arising from his intentional acts.”
• “A greater number of cases, we recognize, have taken the opposite view, concluding that a severability clause does not alter the collective application of an exclusion for intentional, criminal, or fraudulent acts by ‘an’ or ‘any’ insured.”
• “[T]the severability clause . . . , when read in conjunction with the exclusion for the intentional acts of ‘an insured,’ created an ambiguity as to whether a coverage exclusion for an intentional act or injury by one insured extended to all other insureds under the policies.”
• collecting cases in support of this conclusion

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).