Unfortunate can also describe unfortunate circumstances. A natural disaster such as an earthquake or tornado will always have unfortunate consequences. You can even use unfortunate as a name to identify someone or something that is not favored by luck – like the unfortunate ones whose lives were destroyed by the earthquake. First, in terms of proximity, several decisions of the New York Court of Appeals have highlighted the role that the moment plays in the criterion of the unfortunate event. In this case, there is no evidence in the records to reasonably conclude that the relative timing of any of the incidents played a role in the events that unfolded as they did. It is not apparent from the documents before the Court that the short period of time between the collision of the tipper with the transfer and the collision of the Itzkowitz vehicle with the tipper played a role in the collision of the Itzkowitz vehicle with the tilting gearbox. The three incidents here have a common origin: the initial negligence that caused the dump truck to collide with the viaduct. The court looked at whether there was an “uninterrupted” continuum between the events. To be part of the same accident, operational events must be part of the same causal chain.
As soon as an incident occurs and this incident does not cause further injury, the causal chain is broken. Under New York law, in the absence of policy language indicating the intent to combine separate incidents into a single event, the unfortunate event test should be used to determine how events are classified for insurance coverage. The criterion of the unfortunate event, in turn, involves a two-part investigation. First, the court must determine the operational incident giving rise to liability in this case. Second, once the operational incident(s) have been established, the tribunal must consider whether there is a close temporal and spatial link between the incidents resulting in injury or loss and whether the incidents can be considered part of the same causal continuum without any factor or factor being involved. Many questions arise from this analysis, including what kind of language an insurance company should use to show its intention to group incidents, and how close must a collision be just before a chain collision to be considered part of a single causal continuum? This depends on what the parties intended to do when they purchased the insurance policy, which is worded to provide that bodily injury or property damage resulting from continuous or repeated exposure to substantially identical conditions will be treated as an accident or event. We know that the insurance company believed that this meant the aggregation of incidents arising from the same event, and that policyholders believed that separate thresholds were required for separate incidents. Something unfortunate is something you wish you hadn`t had – like that unfortunate incident that suspended you from school.
Let us not address this issue. National Liability & Fire Insurance Company (“National”) appealed a final judgment of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Chen, J.) dated September 8, 2014, granting the defendant`s motion for summary judgment. The appeal is whether the district court erred in finding that a series of events on Interstate 90 constituted three separate “accidents” within the meaning of the national insurance policy at issue. The court noted that the political language resembled the language found by the New York Court of Appeals was not the one that showed an intention to consolidate the incidents. If the wording of the policy indicates the intent to consolidate incidents, the unfortunate event test does not apply. That was not the case here. The court added that these were three separate incidents that could not be combined. The collisions occurred at virtually identical locations on the road and affected the same dump. The unfortunate event criterion does not dictate that separate events are part of the same accident if they meet one of three criteria: spatial proximity, temporal proximity, or occurrence on a causal continuum. The test reflects a “reasonable” balance between the three elements. The District Court upheld that the New York Unfortunate Events Test was applicable in determining how incidents should be classified for insurance coverage. The court explained the two points of the test: (1) the identification of the operational incident giving rise to liability and (2) the determination of the existence of a close temporal and spatial relationship between the incidents and whether the incidents can be considered part of the same causal continuum.
Although the parties dispute the exact chronology of the events at issue, it is common ground that the series of relevant events began when a dump truck coupled to a dump truck struck and damaged a New York State Thruway Authority overpass. After hitting the overpass, the tipper detached from the truck and landed in the right lane of the highway. Larry is active in legal and insurance associations, where he has held various leadership positions. He has lectured in the United States, Bermuda and the United Kingdom and has published extensively on reinsurance and other insurance, litigation and technology topics in various national and technological fields. Between thirty seconds and five minutes later, the vehicle occupied by the “Itzkowitz plaintiffs” crashed into the separate landfill. And then, between seconds and twenty minutes later, the vehicle occupied by the “Compton Hershkowitz plaintiffs” hit the same separate landfill. National submits that this series of events constituted one accident or at most two separate accidents under the policy. The defendants disagree, arguing that the District Court correctly concluded that three accidents occurred.
Applying the unfortunate event test, the Court of Appeal found that the District Court did not err in summarily judgment on the defendants and finding that three separate accidents within the meaning of the policy in question had occurred. For each version of events, including one that minimizes the time interval between the three incidents, the Second Circuit found that the district court correctly determined that there had been three accidents. Applying the unfortunate event test, the Second Circuit found that, in accordance with national policy, three separate accidents had occurred. The damage to the viaduct was neither temporal nor spatial close to the collision of the Itzkowitz vehicle with the tipper, and the events were part of different causal chains. Although there was physical proximity between the second and third incidents, they were also different accidents, both because the second incident played no role in the development of the third incident and because the relative time between the two incidents did not play a role in the occurrence of the third incident.
