February
2016
Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company v. Pasiak
Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co., et al. v. Pasiak, et al., 127 A.3d 346, 161 Conn. App. 86 (2015). The Connecticut Appellate Court ruled that an insured who operated his construction company out of an office in his home was not entitled to coverage under his personal umbrella liability insurance policy for an underlying judgment rendered in a lawsuit against him by an employee who had been attacked by a masked gunman while at work and later detained while in the home office. In overturning a trial court’s determination of coverage, the Appellate Court ruled that the policy’s business pursuits exclusion applied to bar coverage because the employee’s claim arose out of the business pursuits of the insured. The Appellate Court reasoned that “we conclude that the defendant’s conduct, and [the employee’s] resulting injuries, were connected with, had their origins in, grew out of, flowed from, or were incident to the defendant’s business pursuits.” Specifically, the Court noted there was no reason to believe that the employee would have been assaulted or detained had she not been at the office performing her duties as an employee of the insured’s business. GL attorneys, Charles Fortune, Bob Laurie and Heather McCoy, represented Nationwide on the appeal.