Mr. Thorne slept mostly at his warehouse in Valparaiso, Indiana, rather than at the Property. Gas and electricity to the Property had been disconnected because of non-payment, and Mr. Thorne had not been to the house for over three weeks before it caught fire on February 24, 2008.

Mr. Thorne filed a claim with his homeowners' insurance carrier, Member Select Insurance Company. The insurer denied the claim, and Mr. Thorne sued.

A jury returned a verdict in Mr. Thorne's favor, awarding $87,000 in damages.

Member Select asked the court to vacate the jury's verdict and enter judgment in its favor, arguing that there was insufficient evidence to support the jury's finding that Mr. Thorne was entitled to insurance coverage for the fire.

The Member Select Policy

The Member Select policy covered the Property if used as Mr. Thorne's:

residence 

The court upheld the jury's verdict.

In its decision, the court explained that the Member Select policy did not define the term “residence” with any specificity. It noted that the jury had been instructed to consider the following three factors in determining whether the Property was, in fact, Mr. Thorne's residence:

(1) Mr. Thorne's physical presence in the house;

(2) Whether Mr. Thorne had a subjective intent to reside there; and

(3) Mr. Thorne's access to the house and its contents.

The court pointed out that Mr. Thorne had testified that he intended to live at the Property; that he kept almost all his personal belongings at the Property; that his mail was delivered there; and that he went there often, even if only to pick up his mail.

The court added that, other than his brother, who also had lived at the house, Mr. Thorne was the only person with keys to the house.

According to the court, all of this tended to show, “even minimally,” that the Property was Mr. Thorne's “residence” under Indiana law.

The court conceded that there also was “significant evidence” supporting a finding that the Property was not Mr. Thorne's residence. The court noted that, even though it was the middle of winter at the time of the fire, Mr. Thorne did not know that the Property's gas or electricity had been shut off; Mr. Thorne's brother rarely saw Mr. Thorne at the Property; and Mr. Thorne had been sleeping almost exclusively at his warehouse. In fact, the court noted, Mr. Thorne had not been to the Property in over three weeks before the fire.

The court said, however, that in reviewing a jury's verdict, it did not decide between “competing sets of evidence.” It added that, for the jury's verdict to stand, it only had to be convinced that there was a “reasonable basis in the record to support” the jury's verdict.

Here, it concluded, a reasonable person could find that the Property was Mr. Thorne's residence. The court said:

He owned the Property, kept his belongings there, had his personal mail delivered there, and was physically present – albeit infrequently – at the Property.

Accordingly, because there was sufficient evidence to support the jury's finding concerning coverage, the court said that it would not disturb the jury's verdict on that ground.

The case is Thorne v. Member Select Ins. Co., No. 2:09-CV-87-JEM (N.D. Ind. Jan. 23, 2017).