After six years of legal battles, Florida woman Judy Rodrigo was denied insurance coverage for damages resulting from an explosion of an upstairs neighbor’s decaying corpse. Judges held that the term “explosion” does not extend to a decomposing body, and that Rodrigo did not provide enough evidence of an explosion for her policy to cover her.
The bizarre nature of the case got
Insurance Business America readers’ tongues wagging, and several pitched in to deconstruct the situation further.
Reader
Helen questioned whether Rodrigo had basic or broad form coverage, and wondered whether special form coverage would have seen the situation covered.
George answered:
Helen, explosion is covered on all three forms but the argument was that the carrier is saying that this was not an explosion by policy definition.
Adam pitched in to not that “
If she had special form coverage (open perils) then it would have been covered unless it was specifically excluded in the policy. Therefore, she must have had a named-perils policy.”
Finally,
Gregg brought up the interesting point that:
Aren’t our bodies composed of 80%+ of water? If this were an HO-6 policy (in most states) water damage is covered if it comes from anywhere inside the building...
Thanks to
Helen,
George,
Adam,
Gregg and all our readers who commented this week!
