Story Archive

Chicken Cordon Jaune

“Let’s consider the context,” Judge David McKeague of the federal appeals court in Cincinnati, Ohio, wrote. “Beau Darrell Heimer and some friends decided to over-indulge in alcoholic beverages to work up the nerve to hurtle themselves toward each other at high speed on dirt bikes.” They collided. Nevertheless, the court found, the 22-year-old’s “use of alcohol” was legal — it was the driving he did while drunk that wasn’t. And that meant his health insurance policy’s exclusion for “illegal use of alcohol” didn’t protect the insurer from having to pay almost $200,000 in medical bills. “Reading ‘illegal use of alcohol’ so narrowly leaves one seeing double,” McKeague continued. “But ultimately, in this case, the insurer must bear the consequences of its sloppy drafting.” (AC/Grand Rapids Press) ...If there’d been an obliviot clause, the insurer might have won.