Jimmie Lee Taylor v. The Bar Plan Mutual Insurance Company, 2015 Mo. LEXIS 23

Client (trustee and sole beneficiary) retained Attorney to handle trust and estate matters; Attorney owned 100% of his law firm (Law Group).
Attorney advised Client to make six short-term loans: three to Law Group (guaranteed by Attorney) and three to Longview (a business for which Attorney received a commission).
Attorney drafted the promissory notes, advised on terms and repayment, did not provide written disclosure or recommend independent counsel as required by Rule 4-1.8(a); loans were never repaid.
Client sued Attorney for breach of fiduciary duty; bench trial found Attorney breached duties and awarded damages totaling over $900,000.
Client sued Attorney’s malpractice insurer (Bar Plan) via equitable garnishment under §379.200; trial court found Attorney’s conduct fell within policy coverage but was excluded by policy §III(B)(4) ("legal representative of investors" exclusion) and granted summary judgment for Bar Plan.
Supreme Court of Missouri affirmed, holding the exclusion unambiguously encompassed the loans (including debt instruments) and rejecting plaintiff’s arguments about ambiguity, concurrent causation, and conjunctive reading of §III(B).

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether Attorney’s acts fall within the policy’s insuring clause	Taylor: underlying malpractice judgment arose from legal services, so policy covers the conduct	Bar Plan: (initially) argued conduct not legal services; later relied on exclusion	Court: acts were legal services and thus within insuring clause
Whether §III(B)(4)’s term “investment” unambiguously excludes these loans	Taylor: “investment” implies equity purchase; loans are not investments, so exclusion ambiguous	Bar Plan: “investment” includes expenditures for profit, including loans and debt instruments	Court: “investment” is broad and unambiguously covers these profit-seeking loans
Whether concurrent proximate-cause doctrine requires coverage despite exclusion	Taylor: injuries also caused by general fiduciary breaches independent of the investment-capacity exclusion	Bar Plan: the harms flowed from the same self-interested transactions and are excluded	Court: concurrent-cause rule inapplicable—causes were not independent and distinct; exclusion controls
Whether §III(B) subparts are conjunctive (all must apply) because joined by “and”	Taylor: “and” makes the four subparts conjunctive, rendering §III(B) inapplicable here	Bar Plan: a reasonable purchaser would read the numbered subparts as separate exclusions	Court: “and” may mean “or” here; sections are separate exclusions and reading conjunctively would be absurd

Floyd-Tunnell v. Shelter Mut. Ins. Co., 439 S.W.3d 215 (Mo. banc 2014) (summary-judgment and insurance-contract interpretation principles)
Ritchie v. Allied Prop. & Cas. Ins. Co., 307 S.W.3d 132 (Mo. banc 2009) (reasonable insured standard for specialized policies)
Allen v. Cont'l W. Ins. Co., 436 S.W.3d 548 (Mo. banc 2014) (enforce clear policy language)
Burns v. Smith, 303 S.W.3d 505 (Mo. banc 2010) (construing exclusions strictly against insurer; meaning of “and”)
Rodriguez v. Gen. Accident Ins. Co. of Am., 808 S.W.2d 379 (Mo. banc 1991) (courts must not create ambiguities to rewrite policies)
Manner v. Schiermeier, 393 S.W.3d 58 (Mo. banc 2013) (insurer bears burden to prove an exclusion applies)
Noll v. Shelter Ins. Cos., 774 S.W.2d 147 (Mo. banc 1989) (elements for equitable garnishment against insurer)
Bar Plan Mut. Ins. Co. v. Chesterfield Mgmt. Assocs., 407 S.W.3d 621 (Mo. App. 2013) (use of broad contract terms to achieve broad exclusionary purpose)
Intermed Ins. Co. v. Hill, 367 S.W.3d 84 (Mo. App. 2012) (concurrent proximate-cause rule in negligent-supervision context)
Am. States Ins. Co. v. Porterfield, 844 S.W.2d 13 (Mo. App. 1992) (concurrent cause must be independent and distinct)