KINSALE INSURANCE COMPANY v. FFAH CARVER GARDENS LLC PK MANAGEMENT LLC (2026)

FINAL ORDER

This is an insurance declaratory judgment action. In the underlying state-court action, Alaquana Wells and Aariona Williams sued their landlord, FFAH Carver Gardens, and its property manager, PK Management. Their claim was for personal injury based on an explosion in their apartment. The state-court jury returned a $17,000,000 verdict, and FFAH Carver Gardens sought coverage from its excess commercial liability carrier, Kinsale Insurance Company. Through this action, Kinsale seeks a declaration that it owes no duty to defend or indemnify as to the state-court suit.

The parties cross-moved for summary judgment. Having carefully considered the matter, I now grant summary judgment in Kinsale's favor and direct entry of final judgment.

I.

Summary judgment is appropriate when there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). Material facts are those that could affect the outcome. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986). A dispute over a material fact is genuine if “the evidence is such that a reasonable jury could return a verdict for the nonmoving party.” Id. I consider each motion separately, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to—and drawing all reasonable inferences in favor of—the non-moving party as to each motion. Cowen v. Sec'y of Ga., 22 F.4th 1227, 1231 (11th Cir. 2022).

II.

A.

Some basic facts are undisputed. Alaquana Wells lived in an apartment complex that FFAH Carver Gardens owned and PK Management managed. ECF No. 83-2 ¶ 6. In the underlying suit, Wells claimed that while cooking dinner, a “foreign object” left in “the broiler portion of the range” exploded, resulting in a fire that injured her and her daughter, Aariona Williams. ECF No. 84-1 at 36 (underlying operative complaint). The pair sued FFAH Carver Gardens and PK Management for negligence. See generally id. They contended FFAH Carver Gardens and PK Management acted negligently in failing to discover the foreign object—a can of Flex Seal—“within the subject range” and in not maintaining adequate fire-prevention systems. Id. at 38-39.¹

The case went to trial. Wells testified that while she was preparing dinner, she heard a “loud sound” and a “pop.” ECF No. 84-8 at 438:14-439:4.² The broiler door flew open, flames burst out, and she and her daughter began burning. Id. at 438:22-23, 439:10-12, 440:3-6; ECF No. 82-5 at 30:6-8 (CM/ECF pagination); see also ECF No. 84-8 at 540:13-21, 542:2-13 (Taylor's testifying “everything was on fire”); id. at 498:1 (Williams's testifying she also saw “flames coming out”). Doctors treated both for second-degree burns. ECF Nos. 84-10 at 11-12 (Wells's medical records describing burns), 84-11 at 3 (Williams's medical records describing burns). Their medical expert testified that Williams “burned over 8 percent of [her] body” and spent approximately three days in the hospital, while Wells burned about “27.5 percent of her body” and spent about three weeks in the hospital. ECF No. 83-2 at 592:13-18.

Fire experts for both sides testified and described the event as a “Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion,” ECF No. 83-2 at 346:10-20, or BLEVE for short. When a pressurized can—like a can of Flex Seal—“gets more heat, more heat, more heat, and it can't release enough to get all that pressure out,” the can “blow[s] up” and rapidly expels its contents. Id. (Wells and Williams's fire expert). The Flex Seal can “was heated to the point where it BLEVELed and expanded the vapors and it exploded.” ECF No. 83-2 at 944:17-19 (Defense fire expert). The can's contents subsequently ignited, id. at 947:17-948:1-3; see also ECF No. 82-6 at 29:20-24 (CM/ECF Pagination), and the subsequent explosion forced open the range door and “sho[t] flames out.” ECF No. 83-2 at 946:21-24. A “fireball” engulfed the room, “over just as quick as you turn the lights on and turn the lights off.” Id. at 319:7-9, 382:6-12.

Wells and Williams also presented evidence concerning PK Management and FFAH Carver Gardens's management of the complex. Wells and Williams's housing expert testified PK Management and FFAH Carver Gardens did not properly supervise employees, inspect units, or understand “what they had in the units.” ECF No. 83-2 at 819:3-15. The housing entities' expert predictably disagreed. ECF No. 83-2 at 1025:18-1026:11, 1046:19-23.

The jury returned a verdict in favor of Wells and Williams. ECF No. 83-2 at 667. It awarded $15,000,000 to Wells and $2,000,000 to Williams. Id. An appeal remains pending. See FFAH Carver Gardens, LLC v. Wells, Case No. 1D2025-2490 (Fla. 1st DCA).

B.

Kinsale issued a commercial excess liability policy to FFAH Carver Gardens. ECF No. 84-17. The policy, which was in effect at the time of the incident, pays “sums in excess of the ‘underlying insurance’ ” that FFAH Carver Gardens becomes obligated to pay because of injury, provided no exclusion applies. See id. at 6. The state-court final judgment exceeds FFAH Carver Gardens' underlying insurance coverage. See id. at 5; ECF No. 83-2 ¶ 5.

The Kinsale Policy has two exclusions at issue here: the fire exclusion and the failure-to-maintain exclusion. The fire exclusion excludes from coverage “any claim or suit for injury or damage arising directly or indirectly out of, related to, or in any way involving fire, smoke or any conceivable by-product of combustion.” ECF No. 84-17 at 39. It goes on to exclude:

any claim or suit regardless of whether fire, smoke or any by-product of combustion is the initial precipitating cause or is in any way a cause, and regardless of whether any other actual or alleged cause contributed concurrently, proximately, or in any sequence, including whether any actual or alleged injury or damage arises out of a chain of events that includes any fire, smoke or any conceivable by-product of combustion.

Id.

The failure-to-maintain exclusion excludes from coverage claims or suits “arising directly or indirectly out of, related to, or, in any way involving” a “[v]iolation of any law, local order or directive involving any duty to: [m]aintain any room, dwelling or premises in a safe, sanitary, healthy, habitable or tenantable condition.” Id. at 38.

Kinsale contends the fire and failure-to-maintain exclusions each independently preclude coverage. Nonetheless, it monitored the underlying suit under a reservation of rights, ECF No. 84-19, while another carrier provided the defense, ECF No. 83-2 ¶ 8.

III.

This court has jurisdiction because the amount in controversy exceeds $75,000 and there is complete diversity. 28 U.S.C. § 1332. Kinsale is a citizen of Arkansas and Virginia, ECF No. 33 at 2; Taylor, Wells, and Williams are citizens of Florida, ECF No. 34 at 2; PK Management is a citizen of New York, California, New Jersey, Florida, and Ohio, ECF No. 40-1 at 2-3; and FFAH Carver Gardens is a citizen of Delaware and Oregon, id. at 2.

The parties' cross-motions present three issues. See ECF Nos. 82 (Wells and Williams), 84 (Kinsale), 86 (FFAH Carver Gardens and PK Management). The first is choice-of-law. In Defendants' telling, California law governs and is outcome-determinative because it would render Kinsale's fire exclusion ineffective. Kinsale contends Defendants present only a “false conflict” because even if California law applied, it makes no difference here. The second issue is whether the fire exclusion's language (if enforceable) applies. The third issue is whether the failure-to-maintain exclusion independently precludes coverage.

Because I conclude Kinsale's fire exclusion is enforceable and applies here, I do not reach the separate question whether the failure-to-maintain exclusion also precludes coverage.

A.

In diversity cases, federal courts apply the forum-state's choice-of-law rules. Grupo Televisa, S.A. v. Telemundo Comm'cns Grp., 485 F.3d 1233, 1240 (11th Cir. 2007). Once the court characterizes the legal issues (whether tort, contract, property, etc.), it determines the rule the forum state applies to that type of claim. Id. But courts need not complete a choice-of-law analysis to address a “false conflict.” See Fioretti v. Mass. Gen. Life Ins. Co., 53 F.3d 1228, 1234 & n.21 (11th Cir. 1995); see also Tune v. Philip Morris Inc., 766 So. 2d 350, 352-53 (Fla. 2d DCA 2000). A false conflict exists when the states' laws are the same or when they are “different but would produce the same outcome under the facts of the case.” Tune, 766 So. 2d at 352.

Defendants argue that under Florida's lex loci contractus rule, see State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Roach, 945 So. 2d 1160, 1163 (Fla. 2006), California law governs. ECF No. 93 at 22-23 (noting the policy was negotiated and delivered in California). Kinsale does not seem to disagree but instead argues “there is no outcome determinative conflict so the Court can simply apply Florida law.” ECF No. 95 at 9 (cleaned up). Thus, the core of the parties' disagreement concerns whether, assuming California law applies, that law would preclude enforcement of the fire exclusion.

Under California law, an insurer must pay policy benefits to an insured if a covered peril is the “efficient proximate cause” of the loss, even if another specifically excluded peril contributes to the loss. Julian v. Hartford Underwriters Ins. Co., 110 P.3d 903, 906-07 (Cal. 2005). “Efficient” is an elusive term, see Garvey v. State Farm Fire & Cas. Co., 770 P.2d 704, 706-09 (Cal. 1989), but courts generally understand the “efficient cause” to be the “one that sets others in motion,” even if other causes “operate more immediately in producing the disaster,” Sabella v. Wisler, 377 P.2d 889, 895 (Cal. 1963); see also Garvey, 770 P.2d at 708 (referring to efficient proximate cause as “the predominating or moving efficient cause,” the “prime cause”). When, for example, a sewer-line burst (a covered peril) causes subsidence (an excluded peril), the efficient-proximate-cause doctrine mandates coverage. See, e.g., Garvey, 770 P.2d at 707. Significant here, insurers may not contract their way out of the efficient-proximate-cause doctrine; California law makes provisions disclaiming such coverage unenforceable. Julian, 110 P.3d at 907. (The parties agree that Florida, by contrast, allows such provisions. See, e.g., Empire Indem. Ins. Co. v. Winsett, 325 F. App'x 849, 850-52 (11th Cir. 2009) (unpublished, nonbinding opinion)).

Defendants contend “that the precipitating cause of the Claimants' injuries was an explosion—specifically, a BLEVE.” ECF No. 86 at 30. So while the fireball that followed—like subsidence that follows a pipe burst—operated more immediately in producing the injury, it would not have occurred “but for the explosion.” ECF No. 86 at 29. The fire exclusion's broad language—disclaiming coverage “regardless of whether fire ․ is the initial precipitating cause or is in any way a cause”—Defendants continue, “is a red herring because th[at] anti-concurrent causation language ․ is unenforceable under California law.” Id. at 31 (citing Julian, 110 P.3d at 907). Defendants' outcome-determinative argument thus rises or falls with the efficient-proximate-cause doctrine.

The problem for Defendants is that California courts have distinguished between causation standards applicable in third-party liability coverage actions and first-party coverage actions. The efficient-proximate-cause doctrine has been “limited to first party cases, i.e., where an insured seeks coverage for damages to his or her own property interests.” City of Carlsbad v. Ins. Co. of Pa., 102 Cal. Rptr. 3d 535, 540 (Cal. Ct. App. 2009). “In third party cases,” where the insured “is seeking coverage for liability to a third party, the ‘concurrent proximate cause’ doctrine applies.” Id.; see also Julian, 110 P.3d at 904 (describing “the efficient proximate cause doctrine” as “an interpretive rule for first party insurance”).

For that reason, Defendants' citation to Kinsale Insurance Company v. VBC Madison LP is unhelpful. 2025 WL 2592195 (W.D. Wash. Sept. 8, 2025). In that case, the court concluded Kinsale's fire exclusion did not apply to a building fire because criminal activity (a covered peril) was likely the efficient proximate cause of the insured's loss and subsequent liability to an adjacent building owner. Id. at *1, 6-7 (noting the fire was “most likely due to homeless/transient activity involving cooking and drug use”). Washington, like California, prohibits insurers from contracting around the efficient-proximate-cause rule. Id. at *4. But the outcome in VBC Madison hinged in large part on the Washington Supreme Court's reasoning in Xia v. ProBuilders Specialty Insurance Company, 400 P.3d 1234 (Wash. 2017). See VBC Madison, 2025 WL 2592195 at *5 (citing Xia, 400 P.3d at 1240). That case “involved a suit to recover damages incurred by a third party,” and the court applied the efficient-proximate-cause rule “over a dissent protesting” the rule's expansion beyond “first party coverage cases.” See VBC Madison, 2025 WL 2592195, at *5.

Defendants have pointed to no such cases in California, and they have not convincingly argued California would adopt a similar approach. Indeed, in Garvey, the California Supreme Court found it “important to separate the causation analysis necessary in a first-party property loss case from that which must be undertaken in a third-party tort liability case.” 770 P.2d at 710. The “cause” of loss in a property insurance contract “is totally different from that in a liability policy,” because those causes often refer to “fortuitous, active, physical forces such as lightning, wind, and explosion, which bring about the loss.” Id. Property losses often involve “more than one peril that might be considered legally significant,” and the “task becomes one of identifying the most important cause of the loss and attributing the loss to that cause.” Id.

Third-liability coverage, by contrast, covers negligence, which “draws on traditional tort concepts of fault, proximate cause and duty.” Id. That analysis differs from the comparatively rudimentary “coverage analysis in the property insurance context, which draws” purely on “the relationship between perils that are either covered or excluded in the contract.” Id. The efficient-proximate-cause doctrine thus aids courts in “identifying the most important cause of the loss and attributing the loss to that cause.” Id. But the need for the efficient-proximate-cause doctrine as an “interpretive” aid, Julian, 110 P.3d at 904, is absent from third-party coverage claims, which instead look to established tort principles of duty, fault, and proximate cause. See Montrose Chem. Corp. v. Admiral Ins. Co., 913 P.2d 878, 886-87 (Cal. 1995).

The bottom line is that California's efficient-proximate-cause doctrine has no application here, even assuming California law applies generally. And without that doctrine, Defendants are left to argue the fire exclusion, as written, does not reach this case.³ That is the same position they would be in under Florida law, and they have not pointed to any other outcome-determinative differences. They have not, for example, argued that California and Florida law would call for different constructions of the policy exclusions.⁴ Because the outcome is the same under either California or Florida law, I need not engage in further choice-of-law analysis. I can instead turn to the fire exclusion's proper construction.

B.

Defendants contend “Claimants' injuries simply were not caused by a ‘fire’ in the sense contemplated by the exclusion.” ECF No. 93 at 8. They admit the can's explosion “produced a momentary fireball” but claim that scenario is a “freak accident,” as opposed to “traditional fire events,” which are slower burns capable of producing by-products like carbon monoxide. Id. at 8, 26. Defendants thus contend the exclusion applies when, for example, a building catches fire in some other, more “traditional” manner. Id.

The fire exclusion, however, offers no room for that limiting interpretation. It applies broadly to claims “in any way involving fire,” regardless of “whether fire ․ is the initial precipitating cause.” The phrase “in any way” is unquestionably expansive, particularly when considering that the exclusion later contemplates fire causing harm “in any sequence.” See Waller v. Truck Ins. Exch., Inc., 900 P.2d 619, 627 (Cal. 1995) (“The rules governing policy interpretation require us to look first to the language of the contract in order to ascertain its plain meaning or the meaning a layperson would ordinarily attach to it.”). And although the exclusion refers to “by-product[s] of combustion,” that reference is similarly expansive, not limiting. The exclusion reaches fire “or any conceivable” by-product of combustion. The exclusion offers no reason to suggest the use of “or” worked to limit its understanding of the term “fire.”

Under any view of the record, it is clear Wells and Williams's suit involves fire. (So too with Taylor's suit. E.g., ECF No. 84-1 at 52-54 (Taylor's initial complaint alleging “a fire occurred at the Property, resulting in injury to” himself)). Whether assessing the four corners of the underlying complaint (duty to defend) or the facts presented at trial (duty to indemnify), every step of the litigation referred to some “fire” as the “cause of” the claimants' injuries. See, e.g., ECF No. 84-1 at 5 (initial underlying complaint); see Catalina W. Homeowners Ass'n v. First Cmty. Ins. Co., 418 So. 3d 689, 693-94 (Fla. 3d DCA 2025) (noting the “allegations of the complaint govern the” duty to defend, while “the facts of the case” govern the duty to indemnify). No reasonable jury in this case could conclude Wells and Williams sued for—or received a verdict for—injury that did not relate to or “in any way” involve fire. As a matter of law, the fire exclusion precludes coverage.

CONCLUSION

Kinsale Insurance Company's motion for summary judgment (ECF No. 84) is GRANTED. Defendants' motions for summary judgment (ECF Nos. 82, 86) are DENIED.

The clerk will enter judgment, stating, “This case was resolved at the summary-judgment stage. The court finds in favor of Plaintiff Kinsale Insurance Company on its declaratory judgment claim. Judgment is entered in favor of Kinsale Insurance Company and against FFAH Carver Gardens, PK Management, Alaquana Wells, Aariona Williams, and Dontel Taylor. The court finds and declares that Kinsale Insurance Company owes FFAH Carver Gardens and PK Management no duty to defend or indemnify as to claims asserted against them by Alaquana Wells, Aariona Williams, and Dontel Taylor in connection with the April 2022 fire.”

The clerk will then close the file.

SO ORDERED on September 11, 2026.

FOOTNOTES

1.   Dontel Taylor, Wells's boyfriend, also sued FFAH and PK Management, asserting virtually the same claims and allegations. See ECF No. 84-1 at 85 (alleging “a fire occurred at the Property, resulting in injury to the Plaintiff,” and alleging the fire was the “result of an explosive and flammable foreign object being left in the broiler portion of the range”). The trial court consolidated the lawsuits. Id. at 101. And Taylor voluntarily dismissed his claims before trial. ECF No. 83-2 ¶ 9.

2.   Unless otherwise indicated, transcript cites refer to transcript pagination.

3.   Defendants' reference to the concurrent-causation doctrine does not save their argument. ECF No. 91 at 5; ECF No. 93 at 20. That doctrine applies where “true concurrent causes, each originating from an independent act of negligence, simultaneously join together to produce injury.” Garvey, 770 P.2d at 705. But all agree the fireball that burned Wells and Williams followed—and could only exist after—the can's explosion. See Daggs v. Foremost Ins. Co., 148 Cal. App. 3d 726, 730 (Cal. App. Ct. 1983) (“[I]n order for Partridge to apply, there must be two negligent acts or omissions of the insured, one of which, independently of the excluded cause, renders the insured liable for the resulting injuries.”).

4.   Under either state's law, courts must construe policy exclusions narrowly and resolve any ambiguities in favor of the insured. But when an exclusion's text is clear and unambiguous, California and Florida courts will accord the exclusion its literal meaning. See generally Westoil Terminals Co. v. Indus. Indem. Co., 1 Cal. Rptr. 3d 516, 521 (Cal. App. Ct. 2003); Deni Assocs. of Fla., Inc. v. State Farm Fire & Cas. Ins. Co., 711 So. 2d 1135, 1139 (Fla. 1998).

Allen Winsor Chief United States District Judge