A plaintiff who was seriously injured in “an altercation” outside his former house has been unsuccessful in his attempt to collect his judgment from AXA Insurance.
The case is Umlauf v. AXA and a copy is attached. The plaintiff obtained a $1.8 million judgment against his former wife and her brother. He took an assignment of his ex-wife’s rights against AXA, which was the homeowner’s insurer of the property where the “altercation” had occurred. The plaintiff himself had formerly lived at the same house and he was shown as a named insured in AXA’s policy. Because of this, AXA had refused to undertake the defence of the ex-wife and was refusing to indemnify her against the plaintiff’s judgment.
After the plaintiff and his wife had fallen out, the plaintiff had moved into another home, while his wife remained in the original house. The plaintiff notified the insurer of the change, but evidently did not specifically ask that his name be removed from AXA’s policy on the first house. (The broker was originally sued, but seems to have been let out of the action, on some basis.)
After he changed houses, the plaintiff received four new insurance policies in the space of a few days, each purporting to make amendments. Each one was incorrect, in one fashion or another. He became fed up.
The plaintiff testified that he assumed that his name would be removed from the coverage on the first house. As a result, both the plaintiff and his ex-wife were still shown as named insureds on that policy at the time of the injury. The AXA policy did not cover liability arising from bodily injury to anyone insured under the contract of insurance. The court found that this exclusion applied in this case and dismissed the claim against AXA.