The Case of the Doomed Dolly

An icy wind ripped through my coat, sweater, shirt and skin, did a u-turn around my spine and turned my pancreas into a popsicle. Still, I was determined to fight the frigid air and walk home, especially since my bus broke down a mile from my house, leaving me with no other option. So I trudged along the sidewalk, my scarf wrapped to the point of suffocation, trying to ignore Jack Frost staring at my toes as if they were cocktail wieners.

But a few blocks away from my homestead, and the electric-blanket fort I planned to build and spend the next month in as soon as I arrived, I spotted a bizarre sight: two men dressed casually in t-shirts and jeans, trying to unload a boxed-up refrigerator from a moving van with their bare hands.

“Aren’t…aren’t you cold,” I asked.

“Cold?” said the older one, a bear of a man with a thick handlebar mustache. “I’m sweating like a nun in a warehouse here.”

“Don’t you mean a nun in a whor…”

“Whatch your mouth – this is my nephew here! The a/c at the warehouse is broken, and the nun is lifting heavy boxes. Does it make enough sense for you now? Sorry to snap at you, mack…we’re just struggling a bit to move this fridge.”

“Why don’t you use the dolly?”

“I had to retire it for insurance reasons that I don’t understand,” he said.

The possibility of insurance enlightenment warmed my cockles. “Spill it,” I said.

“I have an unendorsed BOP to insure my TV, cabinet and appliance store for liability and property. But I have my auto policy with a direct writer I’ve used for years; it’s a personal auto policy used to cover a business.”

My Spidey sense tingled. Why is someone writing a personal auto policy for a business?

“Go on.”

“So my guys were delivering a washer and dryer in an auto insured by the direct writer. While using a dolly to carry the washer down a long hallway, the dolly scratched the hardwood causing property damage. The insurer denied the claim citing that this was an auto exposure because the property was being unloaded manually with a hand truck. The direct writer denied the claim stating that this was a general liability coverage and that their ‘standard’ car policy does not have any coverage. I’m feeling like a hot potato here—nobody wants to touch this. What do you think?”

“Hello, dolly,” I said, “this is an odd one.”

Why was Ace suddenly singing show tunes? Click here for the answer.

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