At 11 PM on October 10, 2016, Amanali Babwari closed up shop at the Pit Stop Grocery (Pit Stop) convenience store at which he worked and walked to an unlit corner of the parking lot, next to a dumpster, where his employer required him to park. An unknown assailant emerged from behind the dumpster, shot Mr. Babwari nine times and stole about $100 in small bills from him. Somehow, Mr. Babwari survived, and he settled his claims against Pit Stop. A state court entered a consent judgment for $877,659.66.
Alabama’s Direct Action Statute allows prevailing plaintiffs like Babwari to proceed against the insurer and apply insurance money in satisfaction of a judgment. In reliance on that statute, Mr. Babwari filed suit seeking an order compelling State Farm Fire and Casualty Company (State Farm) to pay the consent judgment, likely because Pit Stop had insufficient assets to pay the judgment. The District Court granted summary judgment to Mr. Babwari, and State Farm appealed.
The policy at issue covers bodily injury caused by an “occurrence,” defined as “accidents,” which include “continuous or repeated exposure to substantially the same general harmful conditions.” There are several exclusions, but District Court concluded that none of them applied.
The outcome in the Eleventh Circuit’s unpublished panel opinion in Babwari v. State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. hinged on whether Pit Stop had insurance coverage for Mr. Babwari’s injuries. For the Eleventh Circuit, this was an easy matter. Because the employer’s liability exclusion applies here, the Court does not address State Farm’s other arguments, and the District Court’s contrary conclusion was wrong. General liability insurance policies, like the one at issue here, provide coverage for injuries to the general public, not to employees.
Because Mr. Babwari was injured outside of work hours while in his car, the Court looked to the workers’ compensation statute to determine the scope of the employer’s liability exclusion. Employees are covered under workers’ compensation law, but workers’ compensation claims must arise out of and in the course of employment.
The Court concluded that Mr. Babwari’s injuries arose out of his employment because there was a causal connection between his job and his injury. They arose in the course of employment because he was attacked in his employer’s parking lot just after leaving work. Injuries incurred while commuting to work generally are not in the course of employment, but there is an exception for injuries sustained immediately before or after work.
The Court handles Mr. Babwari’s three counterarguments in a paragraph. The third counterargument invokes the doctrine of respondeat superior, and the Court doesn’t provide enough detail for me to understand why Mr. Babwari thought the doctrine might be helpful. The Court’s brief treatment of his other two arguments, a narrow construction argument and a workers’ compensation argument, risks communicating indifference to Mr. Babwari’s plight, and I’m not confident that his arguments should have been dismissed so cavalierly.
I’ll take the workers’ compensation argument first. Mr. Babwari contends that his injuries are not covered under the workers’ compensation statute. The statute excludes from its definition of “injury” harms that are inflicted by a third party for reasons that have nothing to do with employment. In response, the Court observes, “Whether Babwari’s injuries satisfy other provisions of the workers’ compensation statute is beside the point.” The Court relied on the statute only to determine whether he counted as an employee for the purposes of the exclusion. Whether he can recover under workers’ compensation is a matter for a different body to consider.
The problem with this analysis is that the structure of the opinion suggests a purposive interpretive strategy. The exclusions should marry up to the workers’ compensation statute so that there is a remedy for the general public through general liability insurance coverage and a remedy for employees through workers’ compensation. It cites to its own opinion in Byrd that the purpose of exclusions such as the one at issue was “to limit the insurer’s risk to injuries which are not within the purview of the workmen’s compensation statutes.” The Court’s earlier reliance on a purposive approach undercuts its formalist approach, which allows Mr. Babwari to fall between the cracks.
His first counterargument relates to the second. Mr. Babwari points out that insurance exclusions are generally construed narrowly. The Court responds that the general rule applies only if the exclusions are ambiguous. The Court deems this policy unambiguous, and that may be so as a textual matter, but if the purpose of the exclusion was to carve out accidents covered under workers’ compensation, Mr. Babwari seems to have an argument that the exclusion is, at least, ambiguous.
I have constructed this possible logic behind Mr. Babwari’s counterarguments from the Court’s summary rejection of Mr. Babwari’s counterarguments. Perhaps the Court considered such perspectives and found it unnecessary to engage with them in an unpublished opinion. The Court reversed the grant of summary judgment to Mr. Babwari and remanded for an entry of summary judgment in favor of State Farm.