Drunk in the Serbonian Bog: Intoxicated Drivers' Deaths as Insurance Accidents

• Publication year: 2008

UNIVERSITY OF PUGET SOUND LAW REVIEWVolume 32, No. 1FALL 2008

Drunk in the Serbonian Bog: Intoxicated Drivers' Deaths as Insurance Accidents

Douglas R. Richmond(fn*)

I. Introduction

Drunk driving is a scourge. On a yearly average, approximately 17,600 people die in alcohol-related motor vehicle accidents in the United States.(fn1) The drunk drivers involved in these accidents are often among those killed.(fn2) When they are, and when they are among the many people who hold insurance policies providing accidental death benefits, the question becomes whether their beneficiaries are entitled to recover under those policies. This is an astonishingly difficult question to answer. The term "accident" lends itself to differing interpretations.(fn3) Indeed, few issues so confound courts and litigants as when deaths are to be considered accidents within the meaning of insurance policies affording accidental death coverage.(fn4)

More than seventy years ago, Justice Cardozo, dissenting in Landress v. Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Co.,(fn5) predicted that the Court's suspect reasoning in denying accidental death benefits to the widow of a golfer killed by sunstroke would "plunge this branch of the law into a Serbonian Bog."(fn6) Later courts, struggling to determine whether someone's death was accidental for insurance purposes, have seized on this description in their analytical approaches.(fn7) Scholars credit Justice Car-dozo with "undeniably, the perfect metaphor."(fn8)

Insurers often resist paying accidental death benefits to the spouses, children and other beneficiaries of policyholders killed while driving under the influence of alcohol on the grounds that the policyholders' deaths are not accidental. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company's (Met Life's) stance in Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. v. Potter(fn9) is illustrative. In that case, Met Life denied David Potter's claim for accidental death benefits under his wife's employee benefit plan when she was killed in a motorcycle accident apparently attributable to her intoxication.(fn10) Notwithstanding the medical examiner's declaration of Mrs. Potter's death as accidental,(fn11) the insurer wrote:Common sense, as well as the law, dictate that a death resulting from one's own drunk driving is not an "accident" for the purposes of collecting additional benefits under an ERISA plan's Accidental Loss Insurance. The term '"accident" is universally construed as meaning an event which is "fortuitous, unexpected or unanticipated, which cannot reasonably be foreseen." The dangers of drunk driving .. . are so widely known ... and publicized that they cannot innocently be ignored... . [D]riving while intoxicated is too great a risk to be tolerated without penalty. In today's world, people who drink and drive must be charged with responsibility for their own acts. Serious injury or death resulting from drunk driving is to be expected; either is a result which can reasonably be foreseen. One's own injury or death from driving while intoxicated is, therefore, in the true sense of the word no "accident" at all... . People who drive (which is already potentially dangerous) while intoxicated (thus significantly elevating the risk that harm will occur) necessarily take the chance which invited their own injury or death. Injury or death resulting from such acts is not deemed an "accident" or an "accidental loss" for the purposes of obtaining Accidental Loss Insurance Benefits.(fn12)

Curiously, Met Life had earlier referred to the decedent's death in a "car accident" in an internal memorandum, which belied the "common sense" basis for its denial of accidental death benefits.(fn13) That, combined with other disputed facts, caused the court to deny the company summary judgment.(fn14) It seems obvious that Met Life's reprobation of drunk driving had far more to do with its own economic concerns than it did with societal interests.(fn15) Nonetheless, courts routinely reflect similar intolerance for drunk driving in their decisions and deny accidental death benefits in analogous cases.(fn16) It now appears to be the majority rule that drunk drivers' deaths are not accidental for purposes of accident insurance.(fn17)

The problem, as this Article will demonstrate, is that the majority rule is wrong. Most motor vehicle crashes are traceable to "some failure of judgment that fully reveals its dangers only when it is too late. That is precisely why they are accidents."(fn18) For example, speeding is one of the most prevalent factors contributing to vehicular crashes.(fn19) Although especially deadly when combined with driver intoxication, speeding is a significant contributing factor in fatal crashes involving sober drivers.(fn20) Speeding is clearly unsafe,(fn21) yet speeding does not in and of itself render a driver's death non-accidental.(fn22) Similarly, it is common sense that driving on icy or rain-slicked roads is significantly more dangerous than driving on dry ones, and countless news stories of catastrophic wrecks caused by wet or icy roads make related injuries reasonably foreseeable. Yet, no court would reason that the death of an average driver who voluntarily ventured out in inclement weather was anything other than accidental for insurance purposes. Likewise, driving at night is notably more dangerous than driving during daylight,(fn23) as is apparent to all experienced drivers, and frequent news accounts of serious nighttime accidents make the associated danger foreseeable. Even so, the death of a driver who is killed when she dozes off and crosses a highway centerline, or who fails to appreciate the sharpness of a curve in the dark and runs off the road, is clearly accidental for insurance purposes.(fn24)

Another major contributor to vehicular crashes, "distracted driving," may result from cellular phone use, eating, listening to music, or personal grooming while behind the wheel.(fn25) In fact, "the performance of drivers who are conversing on cell phones is more impaired than drivers who are intoxicated."(fn26) The dangers of distracted driving are obvious. Yet, a court is unlikely to find that a distracted driver's death is anything other than accidental.(fn27)

In summary, the fact that drunk drivers' deaths may be publicly perceived as senseless, as the natural cost of obvious negligence or recklessness, or as reprehensible acts of stupidity, does not mean that they are not accidental.(fn28) Accidents are commonly attributable to "careless, reckless, [and] perhaps foolhardy" behavior.(fn29) Indeed, it is impossible to eliminate risky behaviors from the meaning of "accident" or "accidental."(fn30) Met Life's argument in Potter, and similar positions embraced by numerous other courts, erroneously "conflate[] 'accidental' with 'innocent.'"(fn31)

Moving forward, Part II of this Article briefly discusses the development of accident insurance. It examines courts' struggles in determining whether an insured's death was an accident for purposes of awarding accidental death benefits, and approaches to resolving this issue.

Part III reviews the case law on drunk drivers' deaths as accidents within the meaning of accidental death insurance, examining representative cases in three categories. First, cases reflecting the majority rule that drunk drivers' deaths are not accidents. Second, cases characterizing drunk drivers' deaths as accidents-the present minority view. Third, cases in which courts deny accidental death benefits not because they characterize intoxicated drivers' deaths as non-accidental, but because of policy exclusions.

Within these categories, Part III similarly treats accidental death cases decided in relation to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 ("ERISA")(fn32) and those decided under state law, even though many courts and litigants urge a distinction. This is because ERISA does not preclude courts from correctly determining that an insured's death was accidental in a case in which an ERISA plan administrator reached the opposite conclusion.(fn33) It is, nonetheless, important to recognize ERISA's impact in this area.

ERISA comprehensively regulates employee welfare benefit plans that provide benefits to plan participants in the event of calamities, including those that do so through insurance.(fn34) Congress enacted ERISA with the intent "that a federal common law of rights and obligations under ERISA-regulated plans would develop."(fn35) This it has. The validity of a claim to benefits under an ERISA-regulated plan typically turns on an interpretation of the plan's terms.(fn36) This includes the terms of group insurance policies within a plan. If a plan participant or beneficiaries challenge an administrator's decision denying benefits, the issue is often the federal common law standard of review. Absent a conflict of interest, or other extraordinary circumstances, judicial review of a plan administrator's decision is de novo. Exceptions are when the plan gives the administrator the power to construe "disputed or doubtful terms" or provides that the court afford deference the administrator's eligibility determinations.(fn37) Where a plan grants an administrator such discretionary powers courts review the administrator's eligibility determinations only for abuse of discretion.(fn38) Applying an abuse of discretion standard, the court will uphold an administrator's...