You've heard about drinking and driving. A ruling today by the Eleventh Circuit involved drinking and diving.
The court held that insurance may cover quadriplegia that resulted from a dive into the Atlantic off a platform in the Bahamas. The diver, James Capone, seems to have trained for the head-first leap by imbibing fluids that induced in him a blood alcohol content north of .200.
Aetna argued that diving into the ocean can't count as an "accident" under the policy if the diver meant to dive. The court said no to that. Capone and others had already made dives before the one in which he struck his head on the bottom. A rogue wave may well have suddenly shallowed the water, as Capone contended. Capone v. Aetna Life Ins. Co., No. 09-10222 (11th Cir. Jan. 5, 2010) (applying Georgia law).
Nor did the alcohol exclusion necessarily apply. The drinking may not have caused Capone to dive. Perhaps he did it simply because his sober co-workers already had.
