The Case of Glass-Scratch Fever

Every year, Principal Albert asked me to speak on career day at my old elementary school. I always said yes, anxious to enlighten young minds on the adventurous of all vocations: insurance.

I had a standard speech, and every year it kicked more butt that a Chuck Norris triple feature. In my speech I painted myself as a superhero, fighting insurance injustice as I flew around on a magic donkey named Pepe. The kids loved Pepe…they always laughed when I brought him out.

I arrived at the auditorium on time, with my donkey marionette freshly pressed and detangled, when my stomach suddenly somersaulted with Nadia Comaneci precision. So I ran to the nurse’s office, only to find old Nurse Mildred Socket—who must have been pushing 80 by now—peer¬ing at me through a dusty pair of wire-rimmed glasses.

“Insura, is that you?” she said with a truckload of gravel in her throat.

“Yes, Nurse Socket.”

“I haven’t seen you in 30 years. Let me guess, you still think you have cooties!”

I used to visit Nurse Socket every time Aimee Evans kissed me on the cheek during recess. It was a very icky experience.

“No, Nurse Socket. My belly hurts, it really hurts.”

Just then I noticed we were not alone. A man in a gray suit sat in the chair with his knees pressed into his chest. I recognized the man as Stanley, an old schoolmate of mine who used to terrorize me dur¬ing dodge ball.

“Stanley? Are you here for career day too?”

“Yes, Ace, but I’m sick. I have the fever.”

“The fever?”

“The glass-scratch fever over an insurance matter.”

“Spill it, Stanley.”

“I’m a commercial painting contractor insured on a 2004 ISO CGL policy. I painted the inside of a house a couple of months ago, and now there’s a claim filed against me because I scratched the glass windows while preparing to paint the wooden window panes.”

“So where’s the pinch?”

“Now the adjuster is denying the claim, telling me that since the windows and the wood frames come assembled from the manufac¬turer, the entire ‘set’ is considered to be in my CCC.”

“Logical conclusion.”

“Logical? If the wood is part of the windows, then are the win¬dows part of the house, which is part of the neighborhood, which is part of the city? So now the entire city is under my CCC! That doesn’t seem very logical to me.”

“Stanley,” I said, “it all depends on that particular part of your logic.”

Why was Ace speaking Vulcan? For help solving this mystery and to check your solution against Ace’s, click here.

Jonathan Hermann (hermannism@gmail.com) is an IA contributing editor.