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Hold on tight- No Duty to Defend for Unloading on Truck
May 3, 2024
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The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York recently put to rest an issue of the applicability of a Policy’s auto exclusion to an insurer’s duty to defend in the case Rock Grp. NY Corp. v. Certain Underwriters at Lloyd's, London, No. 2023-03145, 2024 WL 1625154 (N.Y. App. Div. Apr. 16, 2024).
In the underlying case, a subcontractor was injured when unloading an iron beam from a flatbed truck. Specifically, the injured worker testified he was “on the truck”, assisting with moving the beams when a slip from a fellow worker caused him to get pinned between the beam and the bed of the truck, resulting in neck injuries.
Lloyds subsequently denied coverage to the general contractor via the auto exclusion, which excludes coverage for “Bodily injury’ or ‘property damage’ arising out of” the use of an auto, including loading and unloading. Lloyds insisted that since the subcontractor was on the truck at the time of accident, the exclusion applied. Rock Group offered the counterargument that the exclusion could only apply to exclude coverage where the operation of the vehicle is a cause of the accident, which was not the case here.
Both the Supreme Court and Appellate Division sided with Lloyds. Citing to a previous case Transel El. & Electric, Inc. v First Specialty Ins. Co., 214 AD3d 547, the court saw the policy exclusion as unambiguous, in that as the injured worker “was unloading material from a truck's shipping trailer or liftgate,” it constituted “an activity clearly encompassed by the auto exclusion”. Here, the case is the same- the policy clearly delimitated what is and is not covered by the policy, and nothing in the auto exclusion required the explicit “operation” of a vehicle in order to trigger.
On that basis, Lloyds had no duty to defend Rock Group, and granted their motion for summary judgement.