A

The insured's strongest argument for coverage can probably be made under the homeowners vehicle peril, which promises protection “against loss by . . . vehicles.” Such an unconditioned coverage agreement—note that collision with a vehicle, while it is the most obvious type of “loss by vehicles,” is in no way required by the language of the peril—is broad enough to apply to a loss of insured property when the boat containing the property capsizes, assuming that the boat can be considered a vehicle.

Vetrano v. Aetna Life & Casualty Co., 612 S.W.2d 689 (1981) addressed this very question with respect to a homeowners policy insuring “loss by . . . aircraft and vehicles” and a loss of personal property in a capsized fishing boat. The Texas court of appeals concluded that “the unqualified word 'vehicles' . . . is, at the very least, ambiguous,” and cited with approval an earlier Illinois decision, MacKnight v. Federal Life Insurance Co., 278 Ill. App. 241 (1934), which held, in the context of a life insurance policy, that a rowboat was a vehicle. Although the circumstances of the accident were in dispute, the court held that the loss was caused by the boat itself when “for some reason” it “took on more water than the bilge pumps could handle and ultimately capsized.”

A North Carolina subscriber writes: We recently submitted a claim for one of our insureds under a homeowners HO-3 for personal property damaged or lost in insured's automobile when it rolled into a lake. The insurer denied coverage, saying water is not an insured peril under the policy. Why shouldn't the vehicles peril apply to provide coverage?

This seems an even more clear-cut case of “loss . . .by vehicles” than the loss of property from a capsized boat. There is no question that the automobile is a “vehicle,” and as suggested above, the unqualified term “vehicle,” in the absence of a more restrictive definition, is broad enough to apply to any loss to property in the automobile when the automobile in any way contributes to the loss, as it did in this case in rolling into the lake, carrying the property into the lake with it.

From a Minnesota subscriber: We question that the incidents constitute direct loss by the vehicle peril.

The sinking of the property is in direct relationship in time and place to the vehicle accident. This is direct loss by vehicle in the same sense that water damage from the fireman's hose or explosion set off by fire are direct loss by fire.

From a Texas subscriber: There were flash floods in parts of Texas this past spring. Our insured and a friend were sitting on the same inter-city bus when a flood temporarily stranded the vehicle. Much of the personal property stowed in the bottom of the bus was permanently damaged. The friend's insurer is covering this loss under the vehicles peril, but our insured's carrier will not.

This situation shows the inconsistent application of the rule that the insured gets the broadest reasonable interpretation of a coverage provision.