Widow Wins Payment From Allstate
An appeals panel rejects
the insurer's stance involving a death after a climb to the top of Mount
Kilimanjaro.
12/24/03 ASHBEL S. GREEN
A federal appeals panel
Tuesday ordered the insurance company to pay $100,000 to an Oregon woman
whose husband died of a pulmonary edema after climbing to the top of Mount
Kilimanjaro.
A panel of the 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the argument by Allstate Life Insurance
officials that Bernard Arnold "Ben" Chale's
2000 death was not an accident because it was a foreseeable consequence of
climbing in high altitudes.
"Allstate argues that, in an analogous situation, someone who voluntarily walks
across a field during an electrical storm would not have suffered an 'accidental
injury' if he were struck by lightning because the risk was foreseeable,"
Judge
M. Margaret McKeown wrote for the three-judge panel. "This illustration is perhaps
the most convincing evidence of the flaw in Allstate's argument. Any interpretation
of the insurance policy that assumes that a reasonable insured person would not
consider such a scenario to be accidental strains credulity."
Chale, 40, a Portland businessman, was vacationing with his family and friends
in Tanzania during the Christmas holiday in 2000. After summiting the 19,340-foot
Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's tallest, he succumbed to pulmonary edema, a condition
caused by the oxygen-poor environment at high altitude. Chale's wife, Luanne
Kenna Chale, filed a claim under her husband's insurance policy, which called
for $100,000 for his death and another $100,000 if it was accidental.
Allstate
paid $100,000 but maintained that his death was not accidental because, Allstate
said, the cause was reasonably foreseeable. Luanne Chale sued Allstate in
U.S. District Court in Oregon, but Judge Anna Brown agreed with the insurer
and dismissed the case. Chale appealed.
The 9th Circuit agreed that Oregon courts had not agreed on a single definition
of "accidental" but said Brown's ruling "turned Oregon law on its head."
Paul S. Bierly, an attorney with the Portland law firm of Markowitz Herbold Glade & Mehlhaf, said Luanne Chale, a widow with two children, was pleased with the result. Bierly said the 9th Circuit correctly decided the case because insurance terms are "supposed
to be construed in a way the average insured would understand."
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1072271019315300.xml
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