United States: General Liability Insurer Need Not Defend Porn Studio in HIV Suit Filed by Actors

A panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a California business liability insurer was not required to defend its insured—a pornography studio—in a suit filed against it by actors who contended, inter alia, that the insured defendant corporation had not taken adequate steps to protect its performers and prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and HIV during pornographic shoots. Construing the terms of the insurance policies, the panel noted that Exclusion 4 provided that coverage under the Employer’s Liability portion of the policy did not extend to “any obligation imposed by a workers’ compensation … law.” Exclusion 5 provided that coverage did not extend to “damages or bodily injury intentionally caused or aggravated by” the insured. The panel held that the acts and injuries alleged by the defendant insurer and the performers fell within the compensation bargain because the gravamen of each was that the employer did not maintain a safe workplace, and the remedy for such workplace-safety claims was exclusively covered by California’s workers' compensation laws.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Seneca Ins. Co. v. Cybernet Entm't, LLC, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 2565 (9th Cir., January 25, 2019)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 104.03.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law