Background
Benjamin William Call and John Tyler Abner met at a Lexington restaurant and spent several hours eating and drinking together. Surveillance video later showed Call pulling Abner from a car in a parking garage and repeatedly kicking and punching him. Abner died from blunt-force trauma, and Call was subsequently convicted of murder.
Abner’s husband brought a wrongful-death action against Call. State Farm, which had issued a manufactured-homeowner’s policy to Call’s wife, sought a declaration that it had no duty to defend or indemnify Call. The policy covered bodily injury caused by an “occurrence,” defined as an accident, and excluded injury expected or intended by an insured as well as injury resulting from an insured’s willful and malicious acts. The Fayette Circuit Court applied Ohio law and granted summary judgment to State Farm.
The Court’s Holding
The Kentucky Court of Appeals affirmed. Applying Kentucky’s most-significant-relationship test, it held that Ohio law governed interpretation of the policy because the named insured and Call were Ohio residents, the contract was an Ohio policy, and the principal location of the insured risk was Ohio. Kentucky’s connections to the killing and the victim did not outweigh Ohio’s relationship to the insurance contract.
The court also rejected the argument that Kentucky public policy required application of Kentucky law, explaining that Kentucky and Ohio law were harmonious on enforcement of intentional-injury exclusions and inference of intent from inherently injurious conduct. Under Ohio law, Call’s prolonged beating was intentional and substantially certain to cause injury. His intent to injure therefore could be inferred as a matter of law, and the policy’s clear exclusion foreclosed coverage.
Key Takeaways
- Insurance-coverage choice-of-law analysis focuses on the state most closely connected to the policy’s formation, performance, insureds, and insured risk, even when the underlying injury occurred elsewhere.
- Kentucky will disregard its ordinary choice-of-law rule only when applying another state’s law would clearly and overwhelmingly offend Kentucky public policy.
- An insured’s intent to injure may be inferred as a matter of law when the intentional conduct and resulting harm are intrinsically connected, as with a sustained fatal beating.
Why It Matters
The decision reinforces that the location of an underlying tort does not necessarily determine which state’s law governs insurance coverage. For multistate claims, courts may give greater weight to the insureds’ residence, the policy’s origin, and the principal location of the insured risk.
It also confirms that courts need not accept a claimed lack of subjective intent when the insured deliberately commits conduct substantially certain to cause injury. In those circumstances, an intentional-injury exclusion can eliminate both defense and indemnity obligations at summary judgment.