Georgia Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Company brought a declaratory judgment action to determine coverage in an underlying tort action, Meyers v. Clarke Cattle Co., docketed in Jenkins Superior Court, Civil Action No. 1J98CV029W, because the tort occurred away from the insured location and to an excluded employee. Georgia Farm Bureau insured Clarke Cattle Company, and Jimmy Meyers was Clarke Cattle Company’s employee, although not a resident employee within the terms of the policy. The policy contained an exclusion for bodily injuries sustained by “any employee (other than a resident employee) as a result of his or her employment by the insured.” The policy also contained the endorsement “Custom Farming Liability Coverage” that stated, “[exclusion h does not apply,” but that “all other provisions of this policy apply.” The trial court denied Georgia Farm Bureau’s motion for summary judgment because there was an ambiguity in the endorsement language, “all other provisions of this policy apply,” and the endorsement expanded coverage so that the policy covered “any custom farming operations performed” by the insured. The trial court granted summary judgment to the defendants, finding coverage. We affirm.
On July 15, 1997, Meyers was injured while an employee of Clarke Cattle Company acting within the scope of his employment when struck by a wooden pole that was knocked into him by power equipment operated by Robert Jenkins, Jr. In the policy the “insured location” was 954 Highway 23 North, Millen, where Clarke Cattle Company was located, but the injury occurred elsewhere at the John Brett farm; Meyers was working for Brett under an agreement between Clarke Cattle Company and Brett to “swap work for work” or payment, as was needed or required by the kind of work done.
Georgia Farm Bureau contended that farm work away from the covered location did not come within the policy. However, the endorsement “Custom Farming Liability Coverage” provided:
Coverage for Bodily Injury and Property Damage Liability and Medical Payments is extended to apply to any custom farming operations performed by you for others for a charge. Such custom farming operations include the operation, maintenance, use, loading or unloading of farm tractors, trailers, implements, draft animals or vehicles you use while under contract. Exclusion h of Coverage H does not apply. . . . All other provisions of this policy apply.
Under “Farm Liability Coverage Part H, I, J, and L,” custom farming is defined to “mean farming for others for a charge.”
The exclusion “p” relied upon by Georgia Farm Bureau, “Coverage H-Bodily Injury and Property Damage Liability,” excludes injury sustained by: “[a]ny employee (other than a resident employee) as a result of his or her employment by the insured.”
The policy had a second endorsement, “Farm Employers Liability and Farm Employees Medical Payment Insurance,” which covered farm employees’ injuries arising out of and in the course of their employment. The exclusion to this endorsement states that the insurance does not apply to: “[b]odily injury sustained by any farm employee unless the employee brings suit no later than 24 months after the date of the accident for damages because of the bodily injury.” The trial judge found that, when these two endorsements were read together, there was ambiguity in the policy as to whether employees had liability coverage.
Georgia Farm Bureau contends that the trial court erred in denying its motion for summary judgment and in granting the defendants’ motion by finding that an ambiguity was created in the policy by the custom farming and medical coverage endorsements so that the exclusions did not apply to custom farming.
The endorsement for medical coverage contemplates coverage of all employees; when an employee was employed in custom
The insured and the employees have familiarity with the risks and dangers inherent in the operation of the insured’s farm location, but lack equal familiarity with any custom farming location. Therefore, the difference in coverage, with an exclusion at the insured location, but not an exclusion at the custom farming location, would be reasonable because of the different risks of injury from negligence over which the insured and the employee have less control and famil
iarity. Thus, the contract should be construed to mean what a reasonable person in the insured’s position would understand the terms to mean.
Ga. Farm &c. Ins. Co. v. Huncke,
To determine the insurer’s extent of liability under a policy of insurance, a consideration must be made of all those essential provisions which fix, create, limit, or enlarge liability.
Fisher v. American Cas. Co.,
Ambiguity in an insurance contract is duplicity, indistinctiveness, uncertainty of meaning of expression, and words or phrases which cause uncertainty of meaning and may be fairly construed in more than one way.
Allstate Ins. Co. v. Grayes,
Exceptions and exclusions to coverage must be narrowly and strictly construed against the insurer and liberally construed in favor of the insured to afford coverage.
Nationwide Mut. Fire Ins. Co. v. Erwin,
Judgment affirmed.