Auto Insurance: The Eyes Have It! Murder as a Matter of Perspective
Supreme Court of the State of New York, Appellate Division, Second Department: State Farm v. Langan
In politics you have to “follow the money” to figure out why some laws pass and others don’t. In automobile accidents, you have to figure out if there’s insurance coverage to compensate the injured party. That’s especially tricky if the car is a murder weapon.
On February 12, 2008 Neil Spicehandler was struck and fatally injured by a car driven by Ronald Popadich. Popadich was on a murderous spree which included killing a neighbor, shooting a cabbie, attempting and then succeeding in running down a pedestrian, namely, the late Mr. Spicehandler. In September 2005 Popadich pleaded guilty to second degree murder.
The guilty verdict presented a tough issue for John Langan, Administrator of the Estate of Mr. Spicehandler. How can you collect in a civil suit from a driver who intends to kill the victim? Intentional criminal acts are not covered by automobile insurance. Accidents are. Since this was no accident, there was no way to collect from any policy issued for the murderous driver’s vehicle. So Langan looked to his own State Farm auto policy, which he claimed covered Spicehandler in two ways. State Farm, in turn, sued to have the case dismissed and to free it from any financial responsibility under Langan’s auto policy since this was murder, plain and simple.
Maybe not so plain or simple. First, the court agreed that Spicehandler’s Estate could not collect under the uninsured motorist endorsement of Langan’s policy. The uninsured motorist endorsement (of the injured party’s insurance policy) provides coverage for a person when the offending car has either no insurance or limited insurance; it then kicks in as if it were the coverage for the other car, or it kicks in to provide additional coverage above what the other car carried. As the court said, since Popadich couldn’t have coverage for his intentional act of murder, “it follows, then, that, because no coverage would have been provided under a standard automobile liability policy issued to Papadich, State Farm is not obligated to provide benefits under the uninsured motorist endorsement of its policy with Langan.”
So State Farm is clear? Not quite.
Langan pointed to his State Farm policy’s “mandatory personal injury protection endorsement and its death, dismemberment, and loss of sight provisions” and said this was still an accident as that’s defined in his policy and State Farm had to pay. The court agreed.
Even though Mr. Spicehandler was murdered, an intentional act from the viewpoint of the murderer, from the viewpoint of the one murdered “the event was ‘unexpected, unusual and unforeseen’ and not brought about by the insured’s own ‘misconduct, provocation or assault.’” And it was the covered individual’s perspective that governed. Without a specific exclusion for injury or death caused by an intentional act in the State Farm Policy, the insurance company was on the hook and obligated to provide benefits because murder or not, Mr.Spicehandler didn't see death coming.
The old TV show was called Murder, She Wrote. For the Insurance carrier, unless it writes an exclusion for murder, the events are seen from the victim’s eyes, and one thing everyone can agree on is that from the victim’s perspective, murder is “unexpected, unusual and unforeseen.”
One suspects that to State Farm Insurance this decision was also “unexpected, unusual and unforeseen” and that it never knew it was going to get murdered in court.
