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Sanzi v. Shetty1/20/2005
r claims arising out of sexual molestation). In Peerless Insurance Co. v. Viegas, 667 A.2d 785, 788 (R.I. 1995), we adopted the inferred intent doctrine, which states that "because injury always ensues [from the sexual molestation of children], the offender is deemed to intend any injury resulting from the act as a matter of law." Therefore, we held that " n civil actions for damages that result from an act of child molestation, an insurer will be relieved from its duty to defend and to indemnify its insured if the perpetrator is insured under a policy in which there is contained an intentional act exclusion provision." Id. at 789. Further, in Craven, 693 A.2d at 1022, this Court extended the Peerless reasoning to a policy that did not contain a specific intentional act exclusion provision. The policy at issue in Craven specified that coverage would apply to injury arising out of an "occurrence," and defined occurrence as an "accident," in terms nearly identical to those in Shetty's policy. Therefore, we held that where intentional acts are alleged, there is no "accident," and therefore no "occurrence" to fall within the policy's coverage. Id.
Coverage in the policies at issue is triggered by the happening of an accidental occurrence. The plaintiffs' complaint contains five counts, all of which stem from Shetty's alleged sexual abuse of Rebecca Caldarone. Because the alleged sexual abuse carries with it an inferred intent to harm, there is no accidental nature to the resulting injuries. Consequently, under the principles articulated in Peerless and Craven, the inferred intent rule applies to relieve
JUA from its duty to defend or indemnify Shetty for injuries arising out of the alleged intentional sexual assaults of Rebecca Caldarone.
Finally, the defendants argue that the lack of a criminal acts exclusion in JUA Form L- 9285, in effect between March 1978 and March 1980, implies that coverage for injuries arising out of criminal acts was included in those policies. In their efforts to secure a reversal of summary judgment, the defendants claim ambiguity in Form L-9285 sufficient to create a genuine issue of material fact. However, we see little merit in this argument and identify nothing ambiguous in the terms of the insurance policy. When determining coverage, " e look not at what the insurer may have intended the policy to cover or exclude, but rather what an ordinary reader of the policy would have understood the policy's terms to mean if he or she had read them." Porto, 811 A.2d at 1192. We see nothing in the earlier policies that would lead the ordinary reader to conclude that criminal-acts or sexual-abuse coverage was included. The simple fact that later policies provide a specific exclusion does not mandate the inclusion of that coverage in the earlier policies. More profoundly, it is sufficient that the policies under Form L- 9285 do not provide coverage for intentional acts. In our opinion, under the facts presented in this case, summary judgment in favor of JUA was warranted, for there exists no genuine issue of material fact about whether JUA has a duty to defend or indemnify the defendants.
Conclusion
We conclude that because JUA has no duty to defend or indemnify the defendants for the matters alleged by the plaintiffs, summary judgment was warranted. Therefore, we deny the defendants' appeal and affirm the judgment of the Superior Court, to which we return the papers in this case.
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