MIAMI (CN) - The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments from a Florida sheriff's office and its insurance company on Wednesday in a dispute over liability coverage for lawsuits brought by victims of the 2018 high school massacre in Parkland, Florida.

On Feb. 14, 2018, a gunman entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, fatally shooting 17 students and staff while injuring 17 others. The incident was the deadliest mass shooting at a high school to date.

In the aftermath of the shooting, the Broward Sheriff's Office faced 60 civil lawsuits over the law enforcement agency's response, including one targeting a campus deputy accused of hiding from the gunman and failing to immediately alert school officials.

In an effort to limit its liability, the sheriff's office asked a federal court to declare that the multiple victims were part of a single occurrence as defined by its Evanston insurance policy, thus requiring the agency to only pay its self-insured retention of $500,000 before full coverage from Evanston kicked in.

Evanston countered that the sheriff's office must count each victim that filed a lawsuit as a separate occurrence under the policy, which would have resulted in tens of millions of dollars paid by the agency before claiming full coverage.

Last year, the lower court sided with the sheriff's office, ruling the insurance policy was "ambiguous" and should be interpreted in favor of the insured party.

During Wednesday's hearing, Evanston's attorney Samuel Spinner asked the three-judge panel to reverse the lower court's ruling.

"For over 40 years, this court and others applying Florida law have invariably held that a multiple victim shooting event results in multiple separate occurrences under an insurance policy as a matter of law," Spinner said. "That precedent should have compelled the same result in this case."

U.S. Circuit Judge Robert Luck, a Donald Trump appointee, questioned Spinner on the Florida Supreme Court opinion, Koikos v. Travelers Insurance Company, which was relied on by the lower court.

Koikos stems from two shooting victims suing a restaurant owner, who in turn brought his insurance company to court to determine if each gunshot represented a separate occurrence per the insurance policy. When the case landed at the Florida Supreme Court, the majority held each shooting was a separate occurrence but noted the policy language was unclear and ruled in favor of the insured.

"Do you agree with me that Koikos found that the term 'occurrences' was ambiguous as applied to a multiple shooter situation?" Luck asked.

"No, your honor," Spinner said. "Our position is that Koikos determined that these were separate occurrences, but later in the opinion, it was addressing a separate argument where the insured said that all these occurrences should be related together as one."

"But everything else seems to indicate that that reading 'occurrence' in this context was ambiguous, right?" Luck pressed the attorney.

"We disagree, your honor," Spinner said. "And the fact that we're having this discussion and that this court's opinions arguably conflict is why we believe that this is an appropriate case to certify to the Florida Supreme Court to get the clarity that the court is asking for."

U.S. Circuit Judge Frank Hull, a Bill Clinton appointee, questioned how the insured can decide how occurrence is used in a policy based on their own self-interest.

"We do argue that BSO should not be able to just pick and choose whichever definition of occurrence suits it in a particular way," Spinner agreed.

In her comments, Alexis Fields, representing the Broward Sheriff's Office, asked the judges to uphold the lower court's ruling.

"Even within this case, everybody, the parties, the courts, we describe this tragedy in the singular, and this is consistent with how we view tragedies," Fields said. "We don't have plural Boston massacres. We have the Boston massacre, we have the Parkland shooting incident, and this isn't just a matter of semantics."

Hull asked Fields if they should send the case to the Florida Supreme Court for certification.

"Koikos specifically rejected the idea of doing it based on the number of victims or the number of people bringing the lawsuit," Fields answered, adding that the term occurrence should not be based on the number of bullets fired either. "I mean, that's something that is present here in the Parkland case because of the AR-15 and the nature of it."

"There's also something else here that is present in the Parkland shooting incident because there are people who were injured who didn't even have a bullet touch them," she added. "This isn't attributable to each individual shot. So that would be another independent reason to affirm the district court and not certify the question to the Florida Supreme Court."

U.S. Circuit Judge Jill Pryor, a Barack Obama appointee, joined Luck and Hull on the panel.

The judges did not indicate when they will reach a decision in the case.

Source: Courthouse News Service