고의사고 면책 원칙의 완화와 징벌적 배상의 보험담보

There is controversy on the proposition that insurance is not available for injuries or damage intentionally caused. Especially in liability insurance, there is hot controversial on this proposition. The supporters of this proposition argues that it would be against “public policy” to allow insurance to cover injuries or damage intentionally caused by the policyholder. Lately, however, there are an array of intentional torts for which insurance coverage is expressly provided under liability policies. For example, insurance coverage is available for defamation, disparagement, trademark infringement, misappropriation of style doing business, unfair competition, infringement of copyright. Under well-established insurance policy interpretation principles such as contra proferentum and the“reasonable expectations”doctrine, insurers cannot escape their coverage obligations for these types of claims based upon the “expected or intended”exclusion even though these types of claims result in injuries or damages that typically are intentionally caused by the policyholder because the policyholder reasonably expects that the coverage the insurer expressly agreed to provide will, in fact, be provided. Besides, there is no empirical evidence to support the assumption that insurance promotes intentional wrongdoing. Further, there are competing public policies that favor the enforcement of an insurer’s agreement to provide coverage under its policies and the need to compensate the victims. So it is necessary that a policyholder can obtain insurance coverage for punitive damages.