There are cases where I honestly do no fully understand the insurer’s position because it cannot have its cake and eat it too. The recent opinion in Houston Specialty Insurance Company v. Vaughn, 43 Fla. L. Weekly D1828a (Fla. 2d DCA 2018) is one of those cases because on one hand it tried hard to disclaim coverage and on the other hand tried to intervene in the underlying suit where it was not a named party.
This case dealt with a personal injury dispute where a laborer for a pressure washing company fell off of a roof and became a paraplegic. The injured person sued the pressure washing company and its representatives. The company and representatives tendered the case to its general liability insurer and the insurer–although it provided a defense under a reservation of rights—filed a separate action for declaratory relief based on an exclusion in the general liability policy that excluded coverage for the pressure washing company’s employees (because the general liability policy is not a workers compensation policy). This is known as the employer’s liability exclusion that excludes coverage for bodily injury to an employee. The insurer’s declaratory relief action sought a declaration that there was no coverage because the injured laborer was an employee of the pressure washing company. The pressure washing company claimed he was an independent contractor, in which the policy did provide limited coverage pursuant to an endorsement.
The insurer also moved to intervene in the underlying action for the purpose of getting special interrogatories on the verdict form relative to the injured plaintiff’s employment status. The pressure washing company objected because they did NOT want to inflate the damages by having the jury learn that insurance was involved, thereby prejudicing it, particularly if it was determined that there was no insurance coverage. You cannot blame the insured in this instance, particularly because the injured plaintiff was probably all for having the insurer intervene so that the jury learned about the insured’s insurance.
While the trial court granted the motion to intervene, after a number of events occurred (not discussed here), the trial court ultimately dismissed the intervention. The insurer appealed.
The appellate court affirmed the denial / dismissal of the insurer’s intervention in the underlying action. The bottom line is that the insurer was not sued in the underlying action. It could not be sued by the injured plaintiff based on Florida’s non-joinder statute (Florida Statute 627.4136) that would prevent the injured plaintiff from suing the liability insurer directly until it gets a judgment against the insured. Thus, the insurer had no direct and immediate interest in the dispute. Any judgment entered in the case would not be against the insurer—it would be entered against its insured. Further, if the insured obtained a judgment and then sued the insurer, the insurer would not be deprived of appropriate legal defenses.
As the appellate court explained, the insurer’s argument, if accepted, would be to eviscerate Florida’s non-joinder statute:
If the possibility of owing up to the policy limits based upon entry of an adverse judgment [against an insured] was itself a sufficient basis to allow intervention, insurers would be permitted the unhindered and unfettered opportunity to intervene in innumerable tort cases. That is exactly what Houston [insurer] wants; it seeks to interject itself directly into Mr. Vaughn’s [injured plaintiff’s] tort lawsuit. We cannot countenance such a result in light of the legislature’s intent [in Florida’s non-joinder statute] to prevent the introduction of such prejudicial information from being introduced to the jury. After all, courts must continually be concerned that insurance coverage not be introduced to the jury because of its potential to adversely impact the issues of liability and damages.
Please contact David Adelstein at dadelstein@gmail.com or (954) 361-4720 if you have questions or would like more information regarding this article. You can follow David Adelstein on Twitter @DavidAdelstein1.