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Town of Cumberland v. Rhode Island Interlocal Risk Management Trust11/24/2004
existing at or emanating from one location shall be deemed one occurrence." (Emphasis added.)
Reading the policy in its entirety, it is evident that the occurrence requirement is more akin to damages arising from negligence and cannot be applied to claims for personal injuries because to do so would yield the absurd result of a policy that covers unexpected and unintended intentional torts. As the motion justice noted, false arrest, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, and assault and battery, all of which are listed in the policy as potential personal injuries, "can never arise out of an 'occurrence,' as defined in the insurance contract, because they all either require the element of intent or require an element of expectation as to the resulting injury ." The defendants contend that the policy is not ambiguous or illusory, drawing a distinction between tortfeasors who act intending to harm and those who act intending only to commit the tortious act, but not intending to harm. This is a distinction without a difference. We would be hard-pressed to distinguish the pummeling inflicted on the underlying claimants in this case and damages arising from violent police brutality. Civil rights violations, by their nature, are discriminatory acts committed in violation of the United States Constitution.
The defendants rely on Peerless Insurance Co. v. Viegas, 667 A.2d 785, 787-89 (R.I. 1995), in which this Court held that an insurance company was not required to defend an insured in a suit seeking damages for alleged sexual molestation of a child because the policy precluded coverage for personal injuries "expected or intended by the insured." This Court rejected a blind application of the pleadings test to determine whether the insurer was obligated to defend the insured, holding that intent to cause harm is inferred in cases of sexual molestation of a minor. Id. In Peerless, the homeowner's insurance policy did not explicitly provide coverage for damages arising from the sexual molestation of a child. Id. at 787. Furthermore, an ordinary purchaser of homeowner's insurance would not reasonably expect his/her policy to provide such coverage.
Clearly, this case is distinguishable from Peerless. The claim at issue is markedly different from a homeowner's policy claim for damages arising from a criminal act, the sexual assault of a child. We are satisfied that municipalities purchase insurance with the reasonable expectation that it will protect the municipal treasury from liability for intentional torts committed by the town's agents and employees. Furthermore, it is unlikely that an ordinary buyer of this insurance who reads the policy at issue would draw a distinction between intentional and unintentional forms of the covered torts, but probably would assume, by the definition of personal injury , that there would be full coverage for all the torts listed in the policy. Most significantly, in light of our holding in L.A. Ray Realty II, it cannot be disputed that the underlying claim is for civil rights violations, which are explicitly covered under the policy definition of general liability coverage.
We agree with the motion justice that the policy's definitions of "personal injuries" and "occurrences" are contradictory and create an ambiguity, which must be construed against the defendants and in favor of coverage. Neither the inclusion of the term "Ultimate Net Loss" in the general liability clause nor the use of the term "personal injury" in the definition of "occurrence" alters this result but, rather, serves to highlight the ambiguity. We conclude that the policy must be read to provide coverage for the intentional torts listed in the "personal injuries" definition, inc
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