The intra-insured exclusion in a homeowners insurance policy precluded coverage for a wrongful-death claim filed by the father of an insured minor child who shot himself to death after having found an unlocked handgun in the home that his mother shared with her partner, a Wisconsin appellate panel determined, affirming the trial court’s conclusion in a matter of first impression in the state. The policy, which barred coverage for bodily injury to an insured, clearly contemplated the exclusion of claims derived from the insured’s bodily injury, the panel said, reasoning that wrongful-death claims always are derivative in nature (Barrows v. American Family Insurance Co., December 10, 2013, Stark, L.).
Read the rest of the article by Georgia Koutouzos which appeared in the Insurance Law Daily, the newsletter of Wolters Kluwer. Jamie Johnson represented American Family Insurance in the case.