If You Get an STD from Sex in Your Lover’s Car, Is That Covered by the Auto Insurance Policy?

No, states Decide Fernando Gaitan’s view these days in Geico Gen. Ins. Co. v. Brauner (W.D. Mo.). The plan protected “bodily harm” “arising out of the ownership, routine maintenance or use” of an auto, but the court docket held that this language failed to include these a situation:

Kansas courts have held that “For an car insurance company to be liable for an automobile incident, unless of course the categorical language of an insurance policy plan provides usually, the automobile have to, in some way, be concerned in the incident, and the mere simple fact that an incident takes position in or in the vicinity of the car does not impose duty on the insurance provider.” Below, GEICO argues that the automobile at difficulty in this scenario was not remaining employed as a automobile when the transmission of HPV occurred rather, it was the mere situs of the alleged negligence, or at ideal was becoming made use of as a shelter (which is also an insufficient use underneath Kansas regulation to set off coverage beneath Kansas vehicle insurance policies).

Brauner [the insured] … argues that the HPV was contracted [by his sexual partner] as a result of a popular, foreseeable, vehicle use—sexual relations in a vehicle. Defendant Brauner argues that the damage right here is a outcome of a normal and sensible incident or consequence of the use of the included motor vehicle, and Kansas legislation necessitates no much more than a nominal causal relationship concerning the use of the motor vehicle and the damage. See Garrison v. Point out Farm Mutual Auto Ins. Co. (Kan. 1995) (acquiring a sufficient causal link in which the vehicle experienced been applied to transportation hunters and a gun discharged injuring a social gathering). Brauner argues that “people today have been normally regarded to have employed cars as a location for sexual relations courting again to the creation of the automobile and if GEICO needed to exclude protection for sexual intercourse in a auto, it could have completed so.”

On evaluate of the parties’ arguments, the Courtroom finds that consensual sexual relations inside a automobile do not represent a “use” of the auto within the indicating of the topic policy. If the Court docket applied a mere “foreseeability” strategy this kind of as what Brauner advocates for in his reply ideas to his summary judgment movement, all way of injuries would grow to be covered injuries irrespective of possessing no real relationship in between the use of an automobile as an car. Here, there is no serious causal link in between the transmission of HPV and Brauner’s motor vehicle as a substitute, the automobile is the mere situs of the transmission of venereal disease. Accordingly, the Courtroom finds that summary judgment ought to be granted in GEICO’s favor.

The courtroom also mentioned,

Defendant Brauner also argues that the use of a car for consensual sexual intercourse is an activity that 50{a652ac39cb023ff8fd1cc85f4393f5b1bb70bf2f880b7bee35f712e4bd8633f7} or additional American older people have engaged in … citing Cindy Struckman-Johnson, Kayla Nalan-Sheffield, & Samuel Gaster, Sexual Behavior in Parked Cars and trucks Reported by Midwestern Faculty Males and Ladies, The Journal of Sexual intercourse Exploration (2017). Just after reviewing that write-up, which presents the outcomes of an anonymous survey of a mere 195 guys and 511 gals at a compact midwestern college, the Court is doubtful that such analyze stands for the broad proposition asserted by Defendant Brauner that 50{a652ac39cb023ff8fd1cc85f4393f5b1bb70bf2f880b7bee35f712e4bd8633f7} or far more of all American grownups have engaged in this sort of habits.

I am not dubious at all about that.

For an earlier phase of the situation, involving the defendant’s attempt to litigate pseudonymously, see this article.