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Cole v. State Farm Mutual Insurance Company6/14/2000
e the actor intended to cause the resultant damage. Carrying that reasoning to the present case, Respondent asserts that " his court should follow its prior decisions in this instance, and define "accident" according to its common, ordinary and everyday meaning, which would define the term from the perspective of the actor so as not to include the intentional shooting of another person."
Respondent advances shallow interpretations of Harleysville, Glens Falls Ins. Co., and Treas. State Farm does not take into account reasoning in each of the cases that states "the fact that an injury is caused by an intentional act does not preclude it from being caused by accident if in that act, something unforeseen, unusual and unexpected occurs which produces the event." Harleysville, 248 Md. at 151-52, 235 A.2d at 558; see also Glens Falls Ins. Co., 254 Md. at 127, 254 A.2d at 662; Treas, 254 Md. at 620, 255 A.2d at 298. The test employed in these cases is not whether the actor intended the effects of his or her actions. Rather, the question that a court must answer is whether the damage caused by the actor's intentional conduct was "unforeseen, unusual and unexpected." See id. Based on this test, the cases cited to us by Respondent actually may support Petitioner's position in the present case. If we determine that the proper perspective to view the relevant incident is that of the insured's, we must then view the events that caused Ms. Cole's death through her eyes.
A troublesome omission in Harleysville, Glens Falls Ins. Co., and Treas, brought into focus by the present case, is that our reasoning in those cases did not clarify from which perspective a court should view an occurrence to determine whether the damages incurred from the occurrence were foreseeable or expected. Due, in part, to the roles the players in those cases occupied, i.e., the actor who committed the intentional act in each case was also the relevant insured party, our language is ambiguous as to whether the basis of the denial of coverage was because the damages were foreseeable from the intentional actor's perspective or because the damages were foreseeable from the insured's perspective.
In Sheets v. Brethren Mut. Ins. Co., 342 Md. 634, 679 A.2d 540 (1996), we find some added clarity in aid of our analysis here. In Sheets we were called upon to define the term "accident" as it was used in a general liability insurance policy. Sheets involved a suit by two policyholders against their insurer for indemnification from a lawsuit. In the underlying suit, a family that purchased the policyholders' home brought suit against the policyholders for negligently misrepresenting that the home's defective septic tank was in good working condition. The insurer refused to indemnify or defend its insureds in the home purchaser's suit because, in its view, negligent misrepresentation was not an "accident" under the terms of the policy.
In our analysis in Sheets, we relied upon Harleysville, Glens Falls Ins. Co., and Treas to conclude that negligent misrepresentation may be considered an "accident." Of greatest relevance to the present case, we also clarified the perspective to be used in determining whether negligent actions may be considered accidental under the relevant policy. We explained, in pertinent part:
lthough our prior cases may have been less than clear in explaining the relevant inquiry, we hold today that an act of negligence constitutes an `accident' under a liability insurance policy when the resulting damage was `an event that takes place without [the insured's] foresight or expectation.' Harleysville, 248 Md. at 154, 235 A.2d at 559 (citation omitted). In other words, when a negligent act ca
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