The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, reversing a district court's decision, has ruled that an insured's 21-month delay in notifying his insurer about a “minor” accident was not reasonable and, as a result, the insurer had no duty to defend him in the lawsuit that ultimately was filed against him.
|The case
On September 6, 2013, Carl Brumit, the owner of Brumit Services, Inc., a small business that performed residential concrete construction work, was in the parking lot of a Phillips 66 gas station in Columbia, Illinois, with the truck he used for his business. When he backed out of his parking space, he unwittingly struck 68-year-old Delores Menard with the truck's tailgate.
Menard fell and suffered scrape wounds on her elbow and knee. She was treated by an EMT and declined a trip to the hospital, instead choosing to drive herself home.
For his part, Brumit was unaware that he had hit Menard until a bystander alerted him as he was driving away. He then came back to the scene, called for an ambulance, and provided the police officer at the scene with a statement. He observed that Menard was sitting down and “may have had a scratch on her knee.”
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