Court Rejects Safeco’s Attempt to Avoid Coverage Based on Definition of “Residence Premises”

Our clients, John and Karen Durkheimer, own homes in Portland, on the coast, and in Carmel, California. All three homes are insured by Safeco.

During the January 2024 freeze, the Durkheimers’ home in SW Portland suffered hundreds of thousands of dollars of water damage due to burst pipes. Their insurer, Safeco, failed to indemnify their loss in full.

In the ensuing litigation, Safeco raised an affirmative defense asserting that plaintiffs were required to reside at the home in order to maintain coverage. In support, Safeco pointed, not to a coverage exclusion requiring residency as an express condition of coverage, but to policy definitions defining the “insured location” as the policyholders’ “residence premises” and defining “residence premises” in turn as the “family dwelling, used principally as a private residence. . . where [the policyholders] reside.” The Durkheimers readily conceded that the SW Portland home was not their sole or primary residence, but argued that the policy definitions were intended only to identify the home that was the subject of the insurance provided under the policy, and not to act as a condition of coverage.

Plaintiffs filed a Rule 12(f) motion to strike Safeco’s affirmative defense. On February 12, 2025, Judge Stacie Beckerman issued her Findings and Recommendation recommending that the defense be stricken (view opinion here). On April 1, 2025, Judge Michael Simon adopted the Findings and Recommendation and struck the defense as insufficient as a matter of Oregon law (view opinion here).