Single incident does not rise to excluded 'abuse' under homeowners policy
The justices were guided by a 2020 decision related to an identical policy where the court found the term "physical abuse" as used in the exclusion was ambiguous.
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts last week reversed a lower court’s judgment in favor of an insurance company, finding a single push in an unprovoked attack by the insured did not preclude coverage relating to the term “physical abuse” in the context of the abuse and molestation exclusion.
In Dorchester Mutual Insurance Company v. Miville, 2023 Mass. LEXIS 84 (Mass. 2023), the justices unanimously reversed a judgment in favor of the plaintiff, Dorchester Mutual Insurance Co., after the insured, 30-year-old William Brengle, initiated an unprovoked attack on Leonard Miville, 61, by punching him in the head and repeatedly kicking him, causing serious injuries.
Brengle’s parents had a homeowners’ insurance policy through Dorchester Mutual. Miville sought coverage for the injuries he sustained, but Dorchester Mutual denied the coverage and Miville sought the present action against Brengle and his parents in Norfolk Superior Court.
In the Superior Court, Dorchester Mutual filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing that under the terms of a homeowners’ insurance policy, the company had no duty to defend or indemnify Brengle or his parents because Brengle’s conduct constituted “physical abuse” under the terms of the abuse and molestation exclusion—which was not defined in the policy.
Judge Rosemary Connolly had originally agreed with the plaintiff and granted summary judgment in favor of Dorchester Mutual.
After review by the Massachusetts Appeals Court, the SJC granted leave to obtain further appellate review.
The SJC looked to an identical Dorchester Mutual Insurance policy in the case of Dorchester Mutual Insurance v. Krusell, 150 N.E.3d 731 (Mass. 2020), holding in 2020 that the term “physical abuse” as used in the policy exclusion was ambiguous. The court ultimately concluded that “‘physical abuse’ applies ‘to a limited subset of physically harmful treatment, where the treatment is characterized by an ‘abusive’ quality such as a misuse of power, or, perhaps, conduct so extreme as to indicate an abuser’s disposition toward inflicting pain and suffering,’” the opinion cited.
In the present case, the SJC found that because the attack wasn’t achieved by capitalizing on or exploiting an imbalance of power, it didn’t fall within the meaning of “physical abuse” as its viewed in the abuse and molestation exclusion. Thus, the exclusion didn’t exempt coverage in such a circumstance, leading the granting of summary judgment in favor of Dorchester Mutual to be reversed.
“Because the conduct in that case—a single push by the insured—contained no such ‘abusive’ quality, we held that the abuse and molestation exclusion did not preclude coverage,” Justice David A. Lowy wrote on behalf of the SJC.
In interpreting the term “physical abuse” in the abuse and molestation exclusion, the court determined their conclusion in Krusell controlled determining how a “reasonably insured” would interpret the term within the meaning of the exclusion. The court first looked at the policy language within Krusell, specifically the term physical abuse, looking at concepts of power imbalance.
“Miville argues that the incident here was not ‘physical abuse’ because there was no power imbalance between Brengle and himself, and the incident was not ‘so extreme’ as to reflect Brengle’s disposition to inflict pain and suffering,” Lowy wrote. “Dorchester Mutual, however, contends that the incident possessed both ‘abusive’ qualities mentioned in Krusell, supra. Specifically, Dorchester Mutual maintains that, because Brengle was 30 years old and Miville was over 60 years old at the time of the incident, this age difference coupled with Miville’s ‘advancing years’ demonstrated a physical power imbalance between the two.”
In the present case, the SJC concluded that Brengle’s attack on Miville was “unprovoked and inexplicable,” but it was not one involving the misuse of power, noting that there was an even larger age gap in Krusell, with the allegations involving a 23-year-old insured and a 62-year-old victim.
“We had little trouble concluding that no ‘abusive quality’ such as ‘misuse of power’ existed. As a result, a reasonable insured would not expect the abuse and molestation exclusion to preclude coverage for the incident here,” Lowy wrote.
“We’re very pleased with the decision,’ said the attorney for the defendant, Ryan P. Gilday, Law Offices of Michael F. Mahoney, in Lynn, Massachusetts.
According to Gilday, the decision further bolstered the decision previously sent forth in Dorchester, which determined that the term physical abuse was ambiguous and couldn’t be relied on.
The attorney for the plaintiff, John P. Graceffa, Morrison Mahoney, in Boston, was not immediately reached for comment.