In Netflix TV series The Lincoln Lawyer, Season 4 Episode 3, a minor plot element is lawyer Lorna trying to claim a bodily injury settlement for her client, from her client’s auto insurance company, due to a sexually transmitted disease during sex in the car. If I remember it correctly, the client, a woman divorcing her husband, claims her disease resulted from a prior sex act of her husband with another woman in the same car.
The insurance claim bothered me.
I understand one spouse generally can sue the other for bodily injury. Previously there was an interspousal immunity common-law doctrine, but this has been abolished.
Don’t auto insurance policies commonly have a family member exclusion?
And besides, is sex in a car likely to not be covered because it is not use of the car?
Presumably the script writers drew on real life for inspiration.
(tl;dr: In Kansas, under Geico’s contracts, BI attaches for liability from the ownership, maintenance, or use of the insured vehicle. While the car was the site of the injury, the injuring act didn’t count as “use” of the vehicle in the eyes of the law because of the lack of a causal relationship between the injuring act and the operation of the vehicle.)
The general phrasing is “members of the household” . . . sometimes with the additional qualifier of " . . . and has regular access to or use of . . ." are the parties that are excluded from a claimant perspective. Note that familial ties are not relevant in this context (although, historically, it was, IIRC).
So if separated spouses are not living at the same address, those sorts of exclusions won’t apply.
