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Cole v. State Farm Mutual Insurance Company6/14/2000
apparent effort to kill himself and his wife, the insured drove his car into the gasoline pumps of a gas station. Both the driver and his wife survived the incident. The station owner brought a negligence suit against the estate of the driver and the driver's insurance company. At the time of the incident, the policy obligated the insurer to indemnify the driver, its insured, against injuries "caused by accident," a form of third party coverage. The station owner obtained a default judgment because both defendants failed to appear at trial. It then filed an action against the driver's insurer attempting to collect the judgment. The insurer argued that the crash did not constitute an "accident" under the terms of the policy because the driver intended to crash into the station. We explained that there was a significant "distinction between `caused by accident' and an intentional act, the consequences of which were clearly foreseeable as well as a necessary and natural result thereof." Glens Falls Ins. Co., 254 Md. at 127, 254 A.2d at 662. Because the damages resulting to the gas station were the naturally expected consequences of the insured's intentional act, we held that the damage to the station was not "caused by accident."
The final Maryland case of the principal trilogy relied upon by Respondent is State Farm Auto. Ins. Co. v. Treas, 254 Md. 615, 255 A.2d 296 (1969). In Treas, Harry Dawson testified that he dispatched two employees to his home to retrieve his car because during the previous night he had a domestic dispute with his wife. One of the employees, Treas, went to Dawson's home and began to drive down the driveway. At that point, Ms. Dawson appeared and placed herself in front of the car to prevent Treas from driving away. Treas proceeded to drive slowly forward, hoping that Ms. Dawson would step away. She refused and continued to backpedal in front of the car. Treas accelerated and drove the car over Ms. Dawson. She died from the impact.
State Farm, Treas's automobile liability insurer, filed a petition for declaratory judgment to establish that Ms. Dawson's death was not covered under Treas's policy. The relevant terms of the policy obligated State Farm to pay for liability incurred by Treas if the liability was "caused by an accident." Again, the policy coverage at issue was for liability to a third party. The trial judge found that Ms. Dawson's death was "caused by an accident." We reversed the Circuit Court. We explained that injuries caused by intentional acts may be "caused by accident" if something in the intentional act produces an unusual or unexpected result. See Treas, 254 Md. at 620, 255 A.2d at 28. We then compared the facts of Treas with the facts in Harleysville, where the contractor was charged with foreseeing that smoke from its intentionally set fire could damage neighboring homes. We reasoned that if by the contractor's actions in Harleysville the damages to the houses were foreseeable, then the intentional act of Treas running over and killing Ms. Dawson certainly was foreseeable. Because we determined that Treas should have expected to strike Ms. Dawson with the car, we held that her death was not "caused by an accident."
Respondent offers Harleysville, Glens Falls Ins. Co., and Treas to support its position that we should view the events that caused Ms. Cole's death from Mr. Cave's perspective. Respondent reasons that in each of the above cases this Court viewed the events that caused the damage from the actor's point of view and denied coverage in each case because the actor's intentional acts caused foreseeable damages. According to Respondent, when injury is caused by an intentional action, the injury cannot be the result of an "accident" becaus
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