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Exhibit A of the insurance claim, but in a car.
Besides getting paid to read our hard-hitting journalism, car sex has to be one of the cooler ways to become a multimillionaire. Remember that time a woman successfully sued GEICO based on an insurance claim where she contracted HPV from her partner during a romp in a four door? Turns out GEICO wasn’t the biggest fan of the outcome — and they’ll soon be getting a second chance at doing it again. From the ABA Journal:
The GEICO General Insurance Co. should have been given a chance to intervene before a trial judge confirmed a $5.2 million arbitration award to a woman who contracted a sexually transmitted disease during car sex, the Missouri Supreme Court has ruled.
Yes. You read that right. For those who haven’t been following this saga, here is a bit more of the fact pattern:
The woman, identified as M.O. in the litigation, said she was infected with human papillomavirus in November 2017 and early December 2017 during car sex in Jackson County, Missouri. The woman’s sexual partner, whose car was insured by GEICO, had been told that his throat cancer tumor was HPV positive, but he did not disclose the diagnosis, according to prior coverage of the case.
M.O. had offered to settle her claim for $1 million, the policy limit, before arbitration. GEICO said its policy did not provide coverage because the damages claimed didn’t arise from the normal use of the vehicle. It denied coverage and refused to defend its insured.
While I am not a personal injury attorney or an insurance defense lawyer, I do have a pulse on the social expectations of what constitutes normal use of a vehicle. If the insured car was a 2006 Toyota, I think we can all agree that coitus does not comprise any part of that car’s expected “normal use.” The same perhaps cannot be said if the insured car was a Bentley.
The woman[, identified as M.O. in the litigation,] and her sexual partner, M.B., had agreed to submit the matter to arbitration, and that any award would be paid by M.B.’s insurers, rather than M.B. They did not tell GEICO about the agreement at that time.
The woman did notify GEICO about the agreement after receiving the $5.2 million arbitration award. But she did not tell GEICO about the judgment or that the arbitration had concluded. She then filed a petition to affirm the damages in court, which GEICO discovered by monitoring Missouri’s case management system.
GEICO filed a motion to intervene. The trial judge affirmed the award and then granted the motion to intervene. He did not allow GEICO to vacate the award. An appeals court affirmed.
All of this is water under the bridge. And, while I do not know the entanglers’ actual names, I can’t help but read their initials as reading for “My Oopsie” and “My Bad.” Now that you’re all caught up, here is the relevant new information.
The Missouri Supreme Court said state law provided that insurance companies have a right to intervene in a pending lawsuit within 30 days of receiving notice of an agreement involving a tort defendant. The trial judge did not follow the law, even though GEICO filed the motion to intervene on time, the state supreme court said.
Because GEICO didn’t get a chance to intervene before judgment was entered, the judgment must be vacated and the case must be remanded, the state supreme court said.
Given the opportunity to intervene before the judgment, I hope that GEICO does what they need to do. And by that, I mean they need to dress their little mascot up in a cute little suit and give him a proportionate suitcase. That would be the only thing that could bring a sense of normalcy to this case.
GEICO Gets Chance To Fight $5.2M Award For STD Contracted In Insured Car [ABA Journal]
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
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