Episode 25. Fowl Play (Thanksgiving 2024)

Thanksgiving is the peak day for home cooking fires, seeing over 3x the daily average from the rest of the year. And the majority of those fires are caused by deep frying turkeys. 

This week, Bob discusses what happens with your homeowner’s insurance if your house is damaged in a turkey explosion.

You can follow along with the HO3 form Bob discusses here.

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Transcript

I don't know if I should be recording a podcast episode on this topic,

but here's the background. For the last 40 years, it's been my job and my family

to cook the Thanksgiving turkey. This year, we're going to my sister's house and

 she asked me to cook the turkey. Well, She doesn't live in a place where I can go

stay with her and get to cooking early in the morning and just a whole bunch of 

logistical stuff. The request that I cook the Thanksgiving turkey at a remote location led me to  the decision to deep fry a

turkey. So now I've done a little bit of research. I bought a deep fryer,

I've actually practiced with it, and the turkey came out pretty well. So on

Thanksgiving Day, I think I'll be able to pull off my annual feat of getting the

bird on the table on time.

In doing my research though, I found some interesting, if not,

no concerning statistics this is from the NFPA, National

Fire Protection Association. More than 10 ,000 volunteers make up the more than 250

technical committees responsible for publishing NFPA codes and standards.

Tens of thousands of professionals are part of the vast network of NFPA membership.

They have some statistics about Thanksgiving turkeys, so let me share those.

One of the things they say is that on Thanksgiving Day alone, there are an

estimated 1 ,610 home cooking fires. At least that's what was reported to US fire

departments in 2022.

NFPA says Thanksgiving is the peak day for home cooking fires with more than three

times the daily average for such incidents. Thanksgiving is followed by Christmas Day

and Christmas Eve, respectively, with those having nearly twice the daily average.

But it seems from the materials I've read that of the 1600 -plus home cooking fires

on Thanksgiving, more than a thousand of them on average each year are caused by

deep -frying turkeys in oil.

I've done some other searching on the internet and haven't been able to verify these

statistics, but they seem to be Accepted by news outlets across the country and that

is that each year turkey deep fryers on average cause 60 injuries Five deaths and

an estimated 15 million dollars in property damage So how's that for taking a risk

on Thanksgiving Day by deep frying your turkey? I? Think there are some safety tips

That's not what I'm here for. You can go on the line and find the safety tips

needed, but I can tell you that some things I'm going to do is make sure the

turkey is thoroughly thawed out, that it's completely dry,

that the turkey fryer is at least 10 feet away from any combustible structure.

I have a fire extinguisher close by and I do not move the turkey in and out of

the oil when the burner is on. So that means you might have to turn the burner on

and off multiple times as you go through the cooking process. So those are things

that I'm going to do to try to keep it safe. and of course I wear appropriate

protective clothing and keep the pets and little kids away. But what I want to do,

because this podcast is called Coverage Counsel is in, is talk a little bit about

homeowners insurance if you damage your house from deep frying your turkey.

So Basically, what I'm going to do is walk you through briefly a coverage analysis

under the homeowners H03 special form homeowners fire policy to talk about some of

the issues that arise and to demonstrate things I've been talking about on this

podcast about how to read and interpret an insurance policy.

So the sample of the HO3 special form that I have is 22 pages long and the first

two pages are all special definitions. The only insuring agreement on page one says

we will provide the insurance described in this policy in return for the premium and

compliance with all applicable provisions of this policy? Well, that doesn't tell you

much because you have to go through the rest of the 22 pages to know what the

insurance provided by the policy is. So let's do that.

The H03 homeowner's policy is known as an all -risk of physical loss policy,

which means that anything that damages the covered property is something you're

insured for unless it's expressly excluded. Well,

let's start with Section 1 property coverages and the way this policy is structured.

Section one describes what property is covered. In our hypothetical here,

we're talking about damaging our house. So we look under coverage A,

which is the dwelling property coverage, and see that the policy says that we

covered the dwelling on the quote, "Residence premises," end quote,

shown in the declarations, including structures attached to the dwelling.

It goes on, but for purposes of our discussion here, we only need to focus on

those few words. And so we assume for purposes of this,

that the premises shown in the declarations is the address of the house Where you're

doing the cooking what I want to focus on though is the

Specifically defined phrase residence premises. We know it's specifically defined

because it's set off in the paragraph I just read by quotation marks So to read

this policy properly you have to go back to the definitions section which I told

you was in the first two pages of the form and when we get there we see that the

term residence premises is defined in the 11th paragraph and it can be any one of

three things. I'm just going to focus on the first thing which is The one family

dwelling where you reside.

Okay. Where do you reside?

What if you have a vacation home? Do you reside there? What if you have like

a townhouse in the city and a house in the country? which one do you reside at?

The HO3 doesn't tell you. So the key here is going to be what is listed on the

declarations page rather than getting involved in where you reside.

I can tell you this much. The undefined term "reside" could be a problem and a

space to argue for ambiguity of the policy, particularly if you compare the

definition I just read to some other language in the policy. For example,

there's a section called "Limit for Property at Other Residences," implying that you

can have more than one residence. And then the language of that other part of the

policy refers to personal property usually located at an insured's residence other

than the residence premises. Well, what that's really going to come down to is you

may reside there, but it's a premises not listed in the declarations. But the first

question is to make sure that you're looking at the policy that was issued to

protect the address where you're doing the cooking. But wait,

there's more. Under coverage C, for personal property,

it talks about

contents, for example a dwelling that might be covered so if you burn your house

down and there's some furniture or maybe even your turkey fryer gets damaged.

The policy says we cover personal property owned or used by an insured while it is

anywhere in the world. Well that's great but then there's a limitation.

And that limitation is for personal property located at an

insured's residence other than the resident's premises. So in my hypothetical,

or what I'm gonna do, do I get coverage for my turkey fryer if I damage it while

it's at my sister's house? So that's one of the questions let me just say that's

not a really worth fighting for because I think the entire turkey fryer costs $75

so it wouldn't even be over the deductible but here's where we get into another

ambiguity problem so under coverage C there's a paragraph four that says property not

covered and then there's a list of ten categories of property that are

not covered under the policy but the question is are they not covered under the

personal property coverage or are they not covered under the dwelling or other

structures coverage because some of these exclusions are pretty broad such as property

rented or held for rental to others off the residence premises.

And again, residence premises now is a specifically defined term. And you have to

figure out what off the residence premises means. Does that mean off the premises by

one inch? Like if you're put your turkey fryer out in the street in front of your

house? Is that off the residence premises? So, I'm not trying to be too particular

here, I'm just trying to identify some of the things that you might get involved in

in arguing with an insurer when you've damaged your house because of a turkey fryer.

But let's make our hypothetical here simple and just say that we were on the

residence premises and our turkey fryer did cause damage to the property listed on

the declarations page and there are none of these issues that I've described so far

in the case or in the hypothetical. So then we go to section

one, perils insured against that doesn't show up till page eight. In other words,

the last six pages, maybe I should say the first six pages of the policy,

are consumed by definitions and a description of what property is protected.

Now we're going to talk about protected against what kind of peril and as I

mentioned at the top of this podcast the covered causes of losses are direct

physical loss to property described in coverages A and B.

Note that a separate paragraph describes the perils ensured against if you're dealing

with personal property which is covered under coverage C.

I also want to point out here that in the section on perils ensured against under

coverage A, as I mentioned, all perils are covered if they're direct physical loss

and not otherwise excluded. But now we have six

categories of perils that are fairly intricately defined,

or at least described, that the policy will not insure against.

And note that a lot of these do not have definitions in the definition section,

but do have definitions elsewhere. For example,

in this section of perils insured against, the policy says that we do not insure

for loss involving collapse.

If you go to the definition section, there is no definition of collapse.

But there is an optional coverage available under the policy for collapse,

which contains a definition of what collapse is.

So is that the additional coverage and is the exclusion supposed to apply to the

additional coverage or what? How does this come up in the Turkey Friar? Example,

well, what if one of the things that's been damaged is a support post for your

outside deck or awning and it's falling down. Does that involve collapse?

Well, that's something that an insurer or insurer may want to argue about.

It's too tedious to go through all the various exceptions to the perils ensured

against, especially because the exceptions change. There are exceptions to exclusions

that say, well, this peril is not ensured against unless, and then they give some

possibilities. And then it depends on which coverage and type of property you're

talking about, how they apply. So it gets pretty involved. But if you go to page

11, there are a set of exclusions that apply to all of the coverages.

It says basically, the company does not ensure for loss caused directly or indirectly

by any of the following. Well, before I get into those, note that now the see as

using the term cause directly or indirectly. But the coverage is for direct physical

loss. So now they've imported another term, indirect causes.

So does that mean that it has to be the only cause,

Or, if it's a contributing cause but it's indirect, what does that coverage mean?

And there are actually cases on that. California uses a terminology called the

Efficient Proximate Cause, but we're not going to get into that in this podcast

because that would ruin Thanksgiving altogether. I do want to point out,

though, a couple of exclusions that somebody could cite to say your turkey fryer

fire is not covered. For example, exclusion number five is for neglect,

which is defined as neglect.

Policies do that sometimes. They define the term with the term. But there's more.

Neglect means neglect of an insured to use all reasonable means to save and preserve

property at and after the time of a loss.

That doesn't seem to apply to causing the fire in the first place,

but And not using that fire extinguisher to put it out might present a case of

neglect. So let's be mindful of that. Then there's another set of exclusions because

of weather. Well, what if the fire is caused because it starts to rain or snow

outside and it gets into the hot oil which spills out onto the burner, which bursts

into flame, then weather conditions might have contributed to the cause or event,

and it could be excluded.

Acts or decisions, including the failure to act or decide of any person, group,

organization, or mental body, talk about a broad exclusion.

Obviously, an actor decision by me to deep fry the turkey caused a problem.

So, how is that exclusion going to apply? And is my home owners insurer going to

apply it to prevent me from having coverage for the fire I caused. I would hate to

think that that would be the case, but it could happen. Then there's another

exclusion for faulty inadequate or defective maintenance of part or all of any

property whether on or off the residence premises. So what if when I assembled my

turkey fryer I did it wrong or what if it's old and has some leaky seals?

Does this exclusion apply to preclude me from having coverage?

So those are just some of the exclusions and I think I'm going to stop there. I

don't even want to deal with the liability aspects of the coverage. 

But I just wanted to point out that something as

simple as fraying a turkey causing a fire and making a claim for property damage

can result in a pretty detailed, technical, in -depth insurance policy analysis and

depending on the aggressiveness of the insurer or the insured, the kinds of issues

that I described in my prior podcast and one that's going to be coming out in a

week or so on how to interpret and apply an insurance policy. Well,

I hope this wasn't a downer. I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving. I hope there

are no fires and there are no needs to make a claim under an insurance policy and

that everybody identifies those things that they have to be grateful for because we

sure do have a lot that we can be thankful for and appreciate. So have a great

Thanksgiving everybody. Until next time, this is Bob Salander signing off.

Bye bye.