The Supreme Court of British Columbia has sided with an insurance company and rejected a claim by two girls that the insurer should defend them from a claim brought by a man who was beaten by the girls’ friends.

The court dismissed the petition of Becky Leah Unrau and Amy Bonnie Unrau, who were asking that Canadian Northern Shield Insurance Co. defend them from a claim brought by Nathaniel Gerald Heathcote and a third-party claim by Ralph Semple. Heathcote’s claim relates to allegations that he was beaten with a baseball bat by friends of the girls after he asked them to stop racing their cars around his neighbourhood during a graduation party (one of them hosted by Semple).
The girls’ parents were insured by Canadian Northern Shield under a home owners’ policy.

As residents of their parents’ household, the petitioners were entitled to insurance under that policy. The insurance coverage obligated the company to pay all sums that they became legally liable to pay as compensatory damages because of bodily injury or property damage.

The insurer also agreed to defend against any suit that alleged bodily injury or property damage and sought compensatory damages, even if the claim was groundless, false or fraudulent.

The coverage, however, included this exclusion: “You are not insured for claims arising from: bodily injury or property damage caused by the intentional or criminal acts or the failure to act, by or at the direction of any person insured by this policy.”

The court found that this exclusion absolves it from coverage, “In my opinion, the claims brought against the petitioners by both the amended statement of claim and the amended third party notice are claims arising from bodily injury caused by intentional or criminal acts or the failure to act, and are claims for which insurance coverage is excluded by the policy,” said Mr. Justice S.J. Shabbits in his Jan. 8 ruling.

Heathcote alleged that the girls were present when he was attacked, and that they and others then threatened to go and get friends from the party in order to return and physically harm him, that they did go and get a mob of others from the party, and that they and the mob did return and that the mob then attacked him. He alleges that the girls and others prevented hiss friends from helping him.