This case comes to us on two certified questions from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The certified questions arise from a suit filed by a daughter against an organ donation charity when she discovered that the charity — contrary to an earlier representation to her — would allegedly profit from harvesting her deceased mother's tissues. The charity requested a defense from its insurer and the insurer denied a defense. The insurer's subsequent suit against the charity resulted in the following certified questions from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals:
Evanston Ins. Co. v. Legacy of Life, Inc., 645 F.3d 739, 751 (5th Cir.2011). We answer both questions in the negative.
Legacy of Life, Inc. (Legacy) is an organ donation charity. Debra Alvarez consented for Legacy to harvest some of her terminally ill mother's tissues after she died. Alvarez alleges in her suit against Legacy that she only consented because Legacy represented the tissues would be distributed on a nonprofit basis but that Legacy instead transferred them to companies
Legacy had a combined medical professional and general liability insurance policy through Evanston Insurance Company (Evanston). Legacy demanded that Evanston defend the Alvarez suit. Evanston,
Evanston and Legacy both moved for summary judgment. Id. The district court granted Legacy's motion for partial summary judgment on the duty to defend and denied Evanston's motion for summary judgment. Id. The court entered a declaratory judgment that Evanston had a duty to defend, holding that personal injury covers extreme mental and emotional distress and that a Texas court could potentially find human tissues to be property. Id. Tellingly, the district court referred to the duty to defend question as "exceedingly close." Id. at 744. The Fifth Circuit certified the personal injury and property damage questions to this Court and noted that if Alvarez's claims involve either personal injury or property damage under the policy, Evanston has a duty to defend the entire Alvarez suit. Id. at 745, 751.
When determining whether an insurer has a duty to defend, we follow the eight corners rule by looking at the four corners of the complaint for alleged facts that could possibly come within the scope of coverage in the four corners of the insurance policy. GuideOne Elite Ins. v. Fielder Rd. Baptist Church, 197 S.W.3d 305, 307 (Tex.2006). Our precedent favors insureds when examining both the complaint and the policy. As to the complaint, if it includes even one covered claim, the insurer must defend the entire suit.
With these principles in mind, we first determine whether Alvarez's suit seeks damages for personal injury under Legacy's policy with Evanston. Specifically, the first certified question asks: "Does the insurance policy provision for coverage of `personal injury,' defined therein as `bodily injury, sickness, or disease including death resulting therefrom sustained by any person,' include coverage for mental anguish, unrelated to physical damage to or disease of the plaintiff's body?" Evanston, 645 F.3d at 751. The policy defines "personal injury" as:
When an insurance policy defines its terms, those definitions control. Trinity Universal Ins. Co. v. Cowan, 945 S.W.2d 819, 823 (Tex.1997). Legacy claims "bodily" only modifies "injury" and that Alvarez's mental anguish qualifies as sickness under the policy. Evanston maintains that "bodily" modifies "injury," "sickness" and "disease" and that an accompanying physical injury is required.
We agree with Evanston. In Trinity, we examined a homeowner's policy that defined "bodily injury" as "bodily harm, sickness or disease." Id. at 820. Even though Texas tort law allows recovery of mental anguish without any physical manifestations in some circumstances, we held that the policy in Trinity did not cover purely emotional injuries. Id. at 823. We explained that this interpretation gave effect to the commonly understood meaning of "bodily," which implies a physical harm. Id.
Legacy argues that the Trinity policy defined "bodily injury," which is narrower than the term "personal injury" here. Id. at 820 (emphasis added). We disagree that this difference warrants a different outcome from that in Trinity for two reasons. First, the definitions in Trinity and the definition here are virtually identical.
Here, Legacy maintains that Alvarez's injuries qualify as sickness or disease under subsection (a) of the definition of personal injury. Because "bodily" modifies injury, sickness, and disease in subsection (a), a physical manifestation is required for sickness or disease to be covered. Alvarez did not allege a physical injury. Therefore, her claims against Legacy do not trigger Evanston's duty to defend under the personal injury component of its policy. We answer the first certified question in the negative.
Legacy's policy also covered property damage. Accordingly, we must decide whether under that coverage provision Evanston is required to defend the Alvarez suit. The second certified question states:
Evanston, 645 F.3d at 751. Legacy's policy defines "property damage" as, inter alia, "loss of use of tangible property which has not been physically injured or destroyed." Evanston and Legacy agree that human tissues are tangible but disagree on whether they are property. The policy does not define property. Evanston contends that Texas common law and statutes have only recognized body parts as quasi property. Legacy counters that dictionaries define property as something that can be owned or possessed, and that body parts can be possessed.
Legacy argues that we cannot look to the common law or statutes to determine the policy's meaning of property. We disagree. We have referred to property as a "bundle of rights." See, e.g., Canyon Reg'l Water Auth. v. Guadalupe-Blanco River Auth., 258 S.W.3d 613, 618 (Tex.2008); see also Michael A. Heller, The Tragedy of the Anticommons: Property in the Transition from Marx to Markets, 111 HARV. L. REV. 621, 666 (1998) (defining private property as a core bundle of rights). The "bundle of rights" concept is appropriate because property does not refer to a thing but rather to the rights between a person and
Some scholars have observed that there are eleven core rights in the bundle of property rights:
Id. at 663 n. 187 (citing A.M. Honoré, Ownership, in OXFORD ESSAYS IN JURISPRUDENCE 107, 112-28 (A.G. Guest ed., 1961)). Many jurisdictions use variations of these rights to form the notion of "fee simple" ownership of real property. Id. at 663. Some of the key rights in American jurisprudence that make up the bundle of property rights include the rights to possess, use, transfer and exclude others. Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U.S. 164, 176, 100 S.Ct. 383, 62 L.Ed.2d 332 (1979); United States v. Gen. Motors Corp., 323 U.S. 373, 378, 65 S.Ct. 357, 89 L.Ed. 311 (1945). We have never required a person to possess the full, unfettered bundle of property rights for a thing to be classified as their property. See Canyon Reg'l Water Auth., 258 S.W.3d at 617 ("[W]here an owner possesses a full `bundle' of property rights, the destruction of one `strand' of the bundle is not a taking." (alteration in original) (quoting Tahoe — Sierra Pres. Council v. Tahoe Reg'l Planning Agency, 535 U.S. 302, 327, 122 S.Ct. 1465, 152 L.Ed.2d 517 (2002))).
Historically, the bodies of deceased persons (and necessarily the human tissues they contain) have held a unique status in the law. Under the English common law, "a dead body is not the subject of property," although next of kin have a right to possess the body of a deceased person to bury it. Regina v. Price, 12 Q.B.D. 247, 252-54 (1884). In this respect, Texas common law has largely tracked English common law. Long ago, we recognized that next of kin have only quasi-property rights in the body of a deceased person: "[t]here is no property in a dead man's body, in the usually recognized sense of the word, yet it may be considered a sort of quasi property, in which certain persons have rights therein and have duties to perform," such as the right of possession and control of the burial. Burnett v. Surratt, 67 S.W.2d 1041, 1042 (Tex.Civ.App.-Dallas 1934, writ
Culpepper v. Pearl St. Bldg., Inc., 877 P.2d 877, 880 (Colo.1994).
Medical science has undisputedly progressed significantly since we classified bodies as quasi property to the next of kin in 1934. Doctors have been transplanting kidneys for over 55 years.
Our Legislature, in prescient recognition of the rapid progress of medical science, expanded the common-law quasi-property rights of next of kin with the Revised Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (Anatomical Gift Act), granting next of kin the right to make "an anatomical gift of a decedent's body or part for the purpose of transplantation, therapy, research, or education." TEX. HEALTH & SAFETY CODE § 692A.009(a). The Anatomical Gift Act also sets forth the procedure for making an anatomical gift before death, id. at §§ 692A.004-006, and restricts the purposes for selling tissues (to transplantation, therapy, research, or education) and the fees that may be collected (to a reasonable amount for certain services performed), id. at §§ 692A.004, 692A.016.
However, before we can use this legal framework to assess whether the tissues at issue here are property, we must first determine whose property the tissues are alleged to be. The answer to that question may be dispositive. Legacy's policy covers loss of use of tangible property. Alvarez is suing because either she or her mother's estate lost use of the tissues. Accordingly, whether the tissues were property to an unrelated third party like Legacy — a party whose interest is commercial, not personal — is not a question we must answer here. We therefore express no opinion on that issue and leave that question for another day. Here, Alvarez seeks damages both for herself and for her mother's estate for the loss of use of her mother's tissues.
With this legal framework in mind, we first assess whether Alvarez's mother's tissues are Alvarez's property. The common law gives Alvarez the right to direct the burial, which we have called a quasi-property right. Burnett, 67 S.W.2d at 1042. The common law also allows next of kin to sue for mental anguish damages when acts are performed on a decedent's body or tissues without the next of kin's consent in certain circumstances. See Service Corp. Int'l v. Guerra, 348 S.W.3d 221, 231 (Tex. 2011). In recognition of the many advances in medical science discussed above and the ability to transplant tissues, the Anatomical Gift Act also gives next of kin the right to gift tissues. TEX. HEALTH & SAFETY CODE § 692A.009(a).
Despite these rights Alvarez has in her deceased mother's tissues, there are many rights Alvarez does not have. Some of the key rights that make up the bundle of property rights include the rights to possess, use, transfer, and exclude others. Kaiser Aetna, 444 U.S. at 176, 100 S.Ct. 383; Gen. Motors Corp., 323 U.S. at 378, 65 S.Ct. 357. Next of kin have no right to possess a body other than for burial or final disposition. Burnett, 67 S.W.2d at 1042. Next of kin have no right to use tissues unless they have been designated by the individual as a transplant recipient. TEX. HEALTH & SAFETY CODE § 692A.011(a)(3). Next of kin have no right to transfer tissues other than as set forth in the Anatomical Gift Act. Id. §§ 692A.009, 692A.011. And next of kin have no right to exclude, other than to seek damages in certain circumstances for acts done beyond their consent. Guerra, 348 S.W.3d at 231. In light of these limited rights, we cannot say that tissues have attained the status of property of the next of kin.
In Terrill, a widow sued a doctor who performed an autopsy on her deceased husband's body against her will. 376 S.W.2d at 945. The Terrill Court determined that venue in the lower court was proper because the autopsy interfered with the widow's right to possession of the body. Id. at 947. In doing so, the court noted,
Id. (citations omitted). The court was affirming our statement in Burnett that next of kin had a right to possess a body and direct the burial, noting that next of kin may sue for damages if someone interferes with that right. Id. Today, we reaffirm our holding in Burnett that tissues are quasi property of the next of kin but they are not the property of the next of kin.
We next decide whether the mother's tissues are the property of her estate. The Anatomical Gift Act gives an individual the right to designate a recipient of their tissues while they are alive and gives their agent at the time of death the right to designate a recipient immediately before their death. TEX. HEALTH & SAFETY CODE §§ 692A.005, 692A.009(a)(1). The Anatomical Gift Act does not give the estate the right to designate a recipient once the individual dies. See id. § 692A.009(a) (not listing estate or agent as having authority to designate recipient after death). Nor can the estate be compensated financially for the individual's tissues. The Anatomical Gift Act only allows a person to charge a reasonable amount for certain services rendered (such as removal and processing). Id. § 692A.016(b). The Act does not allow for compensation for the tissue itself. Id. § 692A.016(a) (creating an offense if a person knowingly purchases or sells tissue); see also TEX. PEN.CODE § 48.02(b) (criminalizing the buying and selling of human organs). In sum, the individual can designate a recipient for their tissues before their death, but once they die, their estate cannot designate a
We hold that the insurance policy's definition of "personal injury" does not include mental anguish, unrelated to physical damage to or disease of the daughter's body. We also hold that loss of use of tangible property does not include the loss of use of the mother's tissues by Alvarez or her mother's estate. We answer both certified questions in the negative.
Nat'l Union Fire Ins. Co. of Pittsburgh, Pa. v. Merchs. Fast Motor Lines, Inc., 939 S.W.2d 139, 141 (Tex.1997) (per curiam).