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Analysis Of State Laws Permitting Intoxication Exclusions In Insurance Contracts And Their Judicial Enforcement, Sara J. Rosenbaum, Henry Van Dyck, Mandy Bartoshesky, Joel B. Teitelbaum

Health Policy and Management Issue Briefs

This Policy Brief reviews judicial decisions construing state laws that permit insurers to include intoxication exclusionary clauses in their insurance policies. The cases and state laws examined in this analysis span health, life, disability, accidental death and dismemberment (AD&D), workers compensation, and unemployment insurance. Some variant of the intoxication exclusionary clause appears across all of these products, depending on the state. The widespread nature of such laws has its roots in the 1947 Uniform Accident and Sickness Policy Provision Law (UPPL), a model statute whose broader public policy purpose was to avoid the use of insurance to protect against the …