Defining An Occurrence For Sexual Abuse Cases

By Katharine Thompson
Law 360
April 27, 2017

https://www.law360.com/articles/917966/defining-an-occurrence-for-sexual-abuse-cases

In Diocese of Duluth v. Liberty Mutual Group et al., case no. 16-05012 (Mar. 30, 2017), the Bankruptcy Court for the District Court for Minnesota was asked to determine the trigger of coverage and the number of “occurrences” related to negligence claims asserted against the Diocese of Duluth by victims of priest sexual abuse. Such claims drove the Diocese to file for bankruptcy. As part of that bankruptcy proceeding, the Diocese filed an adversary proceeding seeking coverage from several of its insurers which had issued multiple “occurrence”-based policies spanning several decades. Ruling in favor of the Diocese, the court found that multiple years of coverage could be triggered and that multiple “occurrences” could be found in each policy year because each victim was a separate “occurrence.”

The Diocese successfully argued that each alleged act of abuse constituted a separate “occurrence” under all insurer’s policies, although it conceded that under the policies’ “occurrence” definition (“arising out of continuous or repeated exposure to substantially the same general conditions shall be considered as arising out of one occurrence”) multiple instances of abuse of the same victim by the same priest in the same year constituted a single “occurrence” for that year.