Volume 84 — North Carolina Court of Appeals Reports

Municipal Corporations 12.3 — person shot by police officer — insurance policy purchased by municipality — injury covered Where a police officer pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of plaintiff's intestate, plaintiff obtained a jury award of $150,000 in compensatory damages in a civil rights action, at the time of the shooting the police officer was insured under a policy of public officers' and employees' professional liability insurance issued by defendant to the town which employed the officer, and plaintiff complied with all pertinent provisions of the policy and made formal demand upon defendant to pay the judgment obtained against the officer, the trial court erred in ruling that coverage was excluded by the terms of the insurance policy and by public policy which prohibits insuring against liability for one's criminal acts, since the coverage and exclusion provisions of the policy were in such conflict as to make it virtually impossible for either an insured or a beneficiary to determine precisely which perils were covered and which were not; because the policy was reasonably susceptible to more than one construction, it must be construed in favor of providing coverage; and the public policy prohibiting insuring against one's criminal acts must be balanced with the strong public policy considerations favoring the protection and compensation of innocent members of the public.