We have a circumstance where a homeowner was throwing a backyard football party for some of his friends. They had brought the big screen television outside for the event. During the festivities, an unexpected thunderstorm came through with high winds and pouring rain. Everyone, of course, immediately retreated to the indoors, but somehow forgot to bring in the television.

The television was not blown over by the high winds, but it was damaged by the rain that accompanied the windstorm.

This is an HO-3 policy. The insurer has denied payment of the cost to repair the television citing the portion of the policy paraphrased below:

“The peril of wind does not include loss to property contained in a building caused by rain, unless the direct force of wind or hail damages the building causing an opening in a roof or wall and the rain enters through this opening.”

The insurer stated that since television was not “Contained inside a building” that damage from rain would not be covered, because it is only covered while inside a structure and then only if wind first damaged the structure and created an opening for the rain to come into the home.

In our argument for coverage, we reasoned that rain was not a named peril under the policy and could not ever be covered unless it was a part of another named peril under the policy. We opined that “Rain” was a part of the peril of “Wind”.

We stated that we understood that there was a coverage limitation for personal property damaged by rain whilst inside of a building. However, there was no such coverage limitation on rain when the personal property was outside.

We are hoping that you can tell us if we are correct.

Hawaii Subscriber

You are correct that rain is not a named peril for personal property and there is no coverage. However, rain is not part of wind; the two are separate and can happen independent of each other. Had ISO wanted to cover personal property that got caught in the rain it would have made rain a named peril. There is no coverage for this loss.