On February 6, 2014, the Florida Supreme Court took a liberal view of self-insured retentions (SIRs) and held that an insured can apply indemnification payments from a third party to satisfy its SIR under a general liability policy. See Intervest Constr. of Jax, Inc. v. Gen. Fid. Ins. Co., 39 Fla. L. Weekly S75, 2014 WL 463309 (Fla. Feb. 6, 2014) (to read the slip opinion click here). The Court decided the case on two certified questions from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
General Fidelity issued a general liability insurance policy to a homebuilder with an SIR of $1 million. The SIR endorsement stated that General Fidelity would provide coverage only after the insured had exhausted the $1 million SIR. The homebuilder contracted with a third-party to, among other things, install attic stairs in a house under construction. The contract between the homebuilder and the subcontractor contained an indemnification provision requiring the subcontractor to indemnify the homebuilder for any damages resulting from the subcontractor’s negligence.
After the house was built, the homeowner fell while using the attic stairs and sued only the homebuilder for her injuries. The homebuilder sought indemnification from the subcontractor. Following mediation the parties and their insurers agreed to settle the homeowner’s claim for $1.6 million with the subcontractor’s insurer paying the homebuilder $1 million to settle the homebuilder’s indemnification claim against the subcontractor; the homebuilder would then pay the $1 million to the homeowner. A dispute then arose as to whether the homebuilder or its insurer was responsible for paying the $600,000 settlement balance.
The homebuilder argued that the $1 million contribution from the subcontractor’s insurer satisfied its SIR obligation and that General Fidelity was required to pay the remaining $600,000. General Fidelity, on the other hand, argued that the $1 million payment to settle the indemnity claim did not reduce the SIR because the payment originated from the subcontractor, not its insured. Thus, General Fidelity maintained that the terms of the policy required its insured—the homebuilder—to pay the additional $600,000 to settle the homeowner’s claim.
The Court adopted the position advanced by General Fidelity. While the SIR endorsement required that the payment be “made by the insured,” the Court looked to other policies’ SIR provisions that contained more restrictive language. These other policies specify that the SIR must be paid from the insured’s “own account” or make clear that payments from additional insureds or insurers could not satisfy the SIR. Because the General Fidelity policy did not employ this more restrictive language, the Court took a more expansive view of General Fidelity’s SIR endorsement.
The second prong of the dispute centered around whether the transfer of rights provision in the General Fidelity policy gave General Fidelity priority over its insured to the $1 million that the subcontractor’s insurer paid. If it did, then the homebuilder could not claim the $1 million as satisfying the SIR. The majority found that the provision did not give General Fidelity priority over its insured. The majority rested it conclusion on the fact that the provision “does not address the priority of reimbursement nor does the clause provide that it abrogates the ‘made whole doctrine.’”
Justices Polston and Canady dissented. They believed the majority had “rewritten” the SIR provision “to allow satisfaction of the self-insured retention limit in a manner other than the manner specifically provided for in the policy.” They also characterized the majority’s reasoning as creating a “legal fiction” that “effectively reads the phrase ‘by you’ out of [the SIR endorsement].”
To view the history of this case in the Florida Supreme Court, please click here.
Image courtesy of Flickr by Alan Cleaver (no changes).
