Looking For Friends in Massachusetts

January 23rd, 2012 | by Savannah Royston |

The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts is seeking amicus briefs in an important appeal construing the scope of “intentional and criminal acts” exclusion in a homeowners policy. If you belong to an organization that might be interested in having a say on this issue, contact us.

At issue in Metropolitan Prop. & Cas. Ins. Co. v. Morrison, SJC-10858 is a 2010 Superior Court ruling that an exclusion for intentional and criminal acts in a homeowner’s policy precluded coverage for a law suit that a police officer brought against the insured’s teen age son for injuries that the teenager inflicted in the course of resisting arrest. The Superior Court ruled that the exclusion whether or not the insured had a subjective intent to cause injury (as is generally required under Massachusetts law for “expected or intended” injury exclusions).

The insured has appeal, arguing that the “Intentional and Criminal Acts” exclusion should be interpreted in the same manner as the earlier “intentional acts” exclusion, which the Court ruled in Preferred Mutual Ins. Co. v. Gamache, 426 Mass. 93, 686 N.E.2d 989 (1997) only applied if both the act and the resulting injuries were intentional.

The Supreme Judicial Court has accepted direct appellate review of the case and is expected to hear oral argument in May. In the interim, the Court has requested amicus briefing on two issues: (1) whether the intentional and criminal acts exclusion in a homeowner’s policy barred coverage for an insured’s action that caused injury to a police officer while resisting arrest. The Court has also requested briefing with respect to whether the harm from the criminal act must have been intended for the exclusion to apply. The briefs will be due some time in late April.

Although one can read too much into the willingness of high courts to accept direct appellate review, the fact that the SJC took this case away from the Appeals Court does give one concern. At the same time, the appeal presents an opportunity to fix some of the problems that the Court’s earlier Gamache opinion created or, at a minimum, to contain the damage.

Please contact me if you’d like a copy of the trial court’s decision of the briefs that have been filed so far in the SJC.

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