Lawver, Plaintiff-Respondent v. Boling and Another, Defendants-Respondents: Cumis Insurance Society, Inc…

Summary

The Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed the order denying summary judgment to Cumis Insurance Society, holding that whether Lawver was Boling's 'employee' within the meaning of the exclusion in Cumis's automobile liability policy was a question of fact for trial, and that Lawver's injuries arose out of the 'use' of Boling's pickup truck as a matter of law because 'arising out of' requires only some causal relationship between the injury and the covered risk. The court reversed the judgment granting Homestead Mutual Insurance Company summary judgment dismissing the complaint and remanded for trial, adopting the rationale of the California Supreme Court's Partridge decision: where a covered risk and an excluded risk may have concurrently caused an injury, the homeowner's insurer may not be excused from defending or paying until it is determined that the injuries did not result, even in part, from a risk for which it provided coverage and collected a premium. The court expressly declined to decide whether the pickup truck was a 'farm implement' excluded from the Homestead policy's automobile definition.