Liability insurance coverage is designed to protect policyholders from the effect of their negligence but generally offer no protection when a policyholder intentionally causes damage to another. This disparity makes it important that you understand the difference between negligence and intentional harm.
What Is Negligence
When an individual causes harm to another because she did not act with reasonable care, it’s considered negligence. When an individual is negligent, he can be directly responsible for causing harm or damage to another person but it is clear that the damage is not purposeful; it is due to either an oversight, ignorance of a situation, or poor decisions.
What Is an Intentional Act?
Intentional acts that cause harm or damage are those that the perpetrator purposefully creates with the goal of causing damage to another. An intentional act does not have to be a focused attack on a specific individual; in some situations, just knowing about a potential source of danger and deciding to do nothing about it can be perceived as intentional.
Negligence, Intentional Acts and Insurance
Insurance is not generally designed to protect individuals from their preplanned incidents. Instead, insurance is designed to protect against accidental and unexpected damages. Even life insurance, a policy that pays a benefit out after the death of an insured, has some unknowns. Because while every individual knows that eventually he will die, life insurance policies will generally not be issued if you know that your death is imminent due to terminal illness.
Insurance policies do not give policyholders permission to act recklessly with no consequences. It is there to protect the insured from the financial fallout of accidents, unexpected events, and potentially negligent actions. If you have questions about how negligence and intentional activities can affect your insurance policies and payment of benefits, give us a call at Strunk Insurance today. We can discuss the details of your Oklahoma City Insurance policies and help you better understand what may or may not be covered within them.
