Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints v. National Union Fire Insurance Company of Pittsburg, et al.
Split Score
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Case Summary
Disposition
Reversed
The Tenth Circuit reversed the district court’s summary-judgment ruling that separate acts of sexual abuse constituted multiple insurance "occurrences" and therefore left the LDS Church below the retained limits of its excess policies. Holding that the policies’ definitions of "occurrence" are ambiguous and must be construed in favor of coverage under Utah law, the court remanded for further proceedings.
Circuit Split Identified
Legal Issue
Whether institutional negligence that allows repeated acts of sexual abuse constitutes one 'occurrence' or multiple 'occurrences' under excess-liability insurance policies that define an occurrence as 'an accident, including continuous or repeated exposure to substantially the same general harmful conditions.'
Circuit Positions
Institutional negligence and resulting repeated abuse may be aggregated as a single occurrence (ambiguous language construed in favor of insured).
Each discrete act of abuse (or each victim abused at a different time/place) constitutes a separate occurrence under the same policy language.
Conflict Summary
Several circuits read identical 'occurrence' language to aggregate all abuse stemming from an institution’s negligence into a single occurrence, while other circuits treat each individual act of abuse (or each victim) as a separate occurrence, dramatically changing whether retained limits are satisfied and how much coverage is available.