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Travelers Indemnity Co. v. PCR Incorporated12/9/2004
certain standard constitutes a claim for "bodily injury by accident." Travelers argues that such a claim, brought as it is under the intentional-tort exception to the exclusive-remedy provision of the Workers' Compensation Law, even if brought under the objectively-substantially-certain prong of the intentional-tort exception rather than the deliberate-intent prong, cannot be considered to be a claim for bodily injury by accident.
Travelers finds support for this argument in the reasoning we employed in Turner. We noted in Turner that "workers' compensation is the exclusive remedy for 'accidental injury or death arising out of work performed in the course and the scope of employment.'" 754 So. 2d at 686 (quoting ยง 440.09(1), Fla. Stat. (1997)) (emphasis added). Even though the exclusive-remedy provision did not provide explicitly for an intentional-tort exception, we were able to conclude that such an exception was implicit in the bargain struck by the Workers' Compensation Law. We took this reasoning a step further in determining that an injured employee could satisfy the intentional-tort exception not only by demonstrating that his employer actually intended to injure him, but also by demonstrating that his injury was caused by employer conduct that was objectively substantially certain to cause injury. Noting that the statute defined "accident" as "only an unexpected or unusual event or result," we concluded that "under the plain language of the statute, it would appear logical to conclude that if a circumstance is substantially certain to produce injury or death, it cannot reasonably be said that the result is 'unexpected' or 'unusual.'" Turner, 754 So. 2d at 689 (emphasis omitted). Such a result, therefore, could not be considered accidental and was not subject to the exclusive-remedy provision of the Workers' Compensation Law.
Simply put, Travelers' argument is this: (1) the employer's liability policy covers only claims for bodily injury by accident; (2) if these underlying claims were claims for bodily injury by accident, they would be barred by the exclusive-remedy provision of the Workers' Compensation Law--the only reason such claims were allowed to proceed under Turner was because we concluded that they could not be considered to be claims for bodily injury by accident; therefore, (3) these underlying claims, by virtue of the fact that they are not barred by the exclusive-remedy provision, are not claims for "bodily injury by accident" and are not covered by the policy.
This argument certainly presents a reasonable interpretation of the policy's coverage clause, and it is, essentially, the conclusion adopted by the two dissenting opinions. But it is not an interpretation that flows necessarily from the clause's plain language; nor is it the only reasonable interpretation of the clause. The policy does not define the term "accident," and Travelers' argument relies on the importation of our reasoning in Turner and the definition of "accident" employed there. The flaw in this argument, however, is that in Turner we employed principles of tort law to interpret the Workers' Compensation Law. Here, on the other hand, we are called upon to interpret an insurance policy. In Prudential Property & Casualty Insurance Co. v. Swindal, 622 So. 2d 467 (Fla. 1993), in the context of interpreting an intentional-injury exclusion in a homeowners' insurance policy, we held:
Florida has long followed the general rule that tort law principles do not control judicial construction of insurance contracts. Insurance contracts are construed in accordance with the plain language of the policies as bargained for by the parties. Ambiguities are interpreted liberally in favor of the ins
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