Failure to stop?

Car_54

If you thought the VW/Merc compo claims were fanciful, see today's Times:

Woman wins $5m insurance claim after sex in partner’s car

Poppy Koronka

Friday June 10 2022, 5.00pm, The Times

Geico was told to pay $5.2 million to a woman who contracted an STD in a car it had insured

Not long after visiting her doctor for a routine check-up, a woman from Missouri realised she had been injured in a car that had never crashed. What caused her ailment, she told a court, was having unprotected sex with her partner inside.

Since she had human papillovirus (HPV) diagnosed in 2018, the woman, identified as “MO” in court papers, has fought for compensation, arguing that because she was in a Hyundai Genesis at the time, the car’s insurers, Geico, should pay up.

The man, identified as “MD”, had previously had throat cancer diagnosed, caused by HPV, a common sexually transmitted disease that often has few or no physical symptoms. The woman said that MD, her former partner, had known of his HPV diagnosis and did not tell her.

She wrote to Geico in February last year demanding $1 million in damages for “negligence and negligent infliction of emotional distress”. Geico denied her claim.In May last year the case was sent to arbitration, where the arbitrator sided with MO and awarded her $5.2 million in damages, to be paid by the insurer. Geico appealed against the judgment but a Missouri court ruled this week that it lacked sufficient grounds.The case will now go to federal court, where Geico is contesting that the claim is covered by its policy. In a statement to CBS MoneyWatch Geico said: “The question of whether there is coverage for this matter will be determined.”The case could provide a precedent for what insurers will be liable for in the future.

Benny2020

And premiums up enormously.

Keep_pedalling

Only in America could such an insane ruling be made, both the amount of the award and who is supposed to pay. 

mgfvvc

For some insight into how the the ruling came about I recommend Steve Lehto. He's also informative on the California court ruling that bees are a kind of fish.

facade

 The claim seems to be based on her suffering an injury whilst a passenger in a car due to the negligence of the driver.

You can bet there are some lawyers frantically re-drafting the T&Cs of motor insurance right now

Grumpy_chap

I read about this on the BBC also:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-61763333

That seems to suggest there are further routes of appeal still available to the insurer.

The BBC article also seems a bit odd as it refers to the lady catching the virus "from having sex with her then-partner in his car".  One assume that as the phrase "then-partner" was used, this was not a very short casual encounter but something of a more founded relationship and certain activities would have happened on multiple occasions and not only in the car.  If that were the case, the virus could have been contracted on any of those occasions.  No indication in the articles why that case was not made by the insurer.

I suspect there is much more to this and it is all being reported early for the good click-bait scores.  

facade

Grumpy_chap said:

No indication in the articles why that case was not made by the insurer.

I suspect there is much more to this and it is all being reported early for the good click-bait scores.  

If you watch the video mgfvvc linked, (I got about 1/3 of the way before I couldn't bear it any more) it seems that in America the victim can get an award made without involving the insurer at all, and this is the first chance that Geico have had to object.

Aretnap

facade said:

 The claim seems to be based on her suffering an injury whilst a passenger in a car due to the negligence of the driver.

You can bet there are some lawyers frantically re-drafting the T&Cs of motor insurance right now

Assuming motor insurance has has a statutory list of things that it has to cover as in the UK, redrafting the terms would be pointless. It falls down to a question of how the statute is interpreted. 

In the UK for example motor insurance must cover the driver for "any liability arising out of the use of the motor vehicle on a road or public place etc". So the question would be whether the liability arose out of the use of a vehicle, or whether the vehicle was incidental to the act that led to the liability.

I can think of a similar case in the UK, albeit with the opposite result. It involved John Warboys, a taxi driver who drugged and raped his passangers. Several of his victims sued him, and as he was now a penniless jailed ex-taxi driver, argued that his motor insurers should be liable to pay. The argument was that his attacks arose out of his use of the taxi - it was what gave him the opportunity to find his victims, gain their trust etc so was more than incidental to his crimes. The High Court disagreed, finding that the attacks were too remote from his use of the taxi to be said to have arisen out of it, so the claim failed. A claim in the UK along the same lines as this one would presumably also fail for the same reason. 

https://www.brownejacobson.com/insurance/training-and-resources/legal-updates/2012/08/axn-others-v-worboys-othershigh-court25th-june-2012

mgfvvc

facade said:

Grumpy_chap said:

No indication in the articles why that case was not made by the insurer.

I suspect there is much more to this and it is all being reported early for the good click-bait scores.  

If you watch the video mgfvvc linked, (I got about 1/3 of the way before I couldn't bear it any more) it seems that in America the victim can get an award made without involving the insurer at all, and this is the first chance that Geico have had to object.

The insurer actually refused to get involved and they've missed the boat. In essence the court said "The right time to object was when the initial case was decided. You can't expect to waste the court's time with a new trial when you didn't take the opportunity to defend the case at the start."

lordmountararat

These headline ludicrous awards in the US are often overturned on appeal.

TripleH

Has anyone else noticed the man's identity was MD and it's connected to a firm called Geico. I wonder if the party 'at fault' feel right Charlies with the sheen taken off their day.

All we need is a Gordon somewhere and we have a Hollywood film.