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Great Lakes Ins. SE v. Raiders Retreat Realty Co.
To insure its boat, Raiders Retreat Realty, a Pennsylvania business, purchased a policy from Great Lakes Insurance, a company organized in Germany and headquartered in the United Kingdom. The insurance contract included a choice-of-law provision that selected New York law to govern future disputes between the parties.
Years later, Raiders’ boat ran aground near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the opinion noted. After Raiders submitted an insurance claim, Great Lakes denied coverage. Great Lakes asserted Raiders breached the insurance contract by failing to maintain the boat’s fire-suppression system. According to Great Lakes, the breach voided the insurance contract in its entirety, even though the boat’s fire-suppression system didn’t contribute to the accident.
Great Lakes sued Raiders for declaratory relief in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Great Lakes alleged Raiders breached the insurance contract and the breach allowed Great Lakes to deny insurance coverage. In response, Raiders advanced contract claims under Pennsylvania law. Great Lakes countered Pennsylvania law didn’t apply to this dispute; rather, New York law applied under the choice-of-law provision in the parties’ insurance contract.
The District Court agreed with Great Lakes. The court reasoned federal maritime law regards choice-of-law provisions as presumptively valid and enforceable. The court enforced the parties’ choice-of-law provision and rejected Raiders’ Pennsylvania law contract claims.
The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals vacated that judgment. The 3rd Circuit held choice-of-law provisions in maritime contracts are presumptively enforceable as a matter of federal maritime law, but nonetheless must yield to a strong public policy of the state in which the suit is brought. The court remanded for the District Court to consider whether applying New York contract law here would violate Pennsylvania’s public policy and whether Pennsylvania law therefore should apply. The U.S. Supreme Court Court granted certiorari to resolve a split regarding the enforceability of choice-of-law provisions in maritime contracts.
After evaluation, it was affirmed choice-of-law provisions in maritime contracts are presumptively enforceable as a matter of federal maritime law, with certain narrow exceptions, and no exception to the presumption applies in this case.
The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the 3rd Circuit.
According to the opinion, in 2012, Damian McElrath killed his mother Diane. Diane, a single parent who adopted McElrath when he was two years old, struggled for years with caring for him. At a young age, McElrath was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. He had trouble in school, including suspensions and low grades, and experienced several run-ins with law enforcement. These issues, among others, led to quarrels between McElrath and his mother.
A few years before Diane’s murder, McElrath’s mental health began to deteriorate substantially, eventually manifesting into a belief Diane was poisoning his food and drink with ammonia and pesticides. At some point, McElrath began to exhibit other delusions. These delusions intensified to the point that just a few weeks before the events giving rise to this case, McElrath was committed to a mental health facility, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. After two weeks of hospitalization, clinical staff believed McElrath was no longer a threat to himself or others and there was no evidence of further delusions. McElrath was discharged.
One week later, McElrath stabbed Diane to death. Immediately after the stabbing, McElrath composed a note in which he explained he killed Diane because she had been poisoning him and she had confessed to doing so. McElrath then called 911. He told the dispatch officer he had killed his mother and asked if his actions were wrong. After law enforcement arrived at the scene, McElrath was taken to a police station for interrogation, where he told the investigator, “I killed my Mom because she poisoned me.”
Georgia charged McElrath with three crimes stemming from Diane’s death: malice murder, felony murder and aggravated assault. At trial, McElrath didn’t dispute he killed Diane but asserted an insanity defense. Under Georgia law, a jury may find a criminal defendant “not guilty by reason of insanity” if, at the time of the crime, he “did not have mental capacity to distinguish between right and wrong” or he committed the crime “because of a delusional compulsion as to such act which overmastered his will to resist committing the crime.” Such a verdict results in the defendant’s commitment to a state mental health facility until a court determines release is appropriate. Even if a defendant fails to prove an insanity defense, a Georgia jury may still render a verdict of “guilty but mentally ill,” under which the State Department of Corrections may, at its discretion, refer a defendant for temporary mental health treatment.
The jury returned a split verdict against McElrath. It found him not guilty by reason of insanity on the malice murder charge and guilty but mentally ill on the felony murder and aggravated assault charges. The trial court accepted the jury’s verdict, and eventually sentenced McElrath to life imprisonment based on the felony murder conviction.
McElrath appealed. He argued the felony murder conviction should be vacated because the guilty-but-mentally-ill verdict for that crime was “repugnant” to the jury’s “not guilty by reason of insanity” verdict for malice murder.
The Supreme Court of Georgia agreed with McElrath the verdicts were repugnant under Georgia law. As the court explained, “the not guilty by reason of insanity verdict on malice murder and the guilty but mentally ill verdict on felony murder based on aggravated assault required affirmative findings of different mental states that could not exist at the same time during the commission of those crimes as they were indicted, proved, and charged to the jury.” There was no way to reconcile those verdicts because, as the court noted, the jury couldn’t conclude “that the crimes occurred at different times or through distinct acts.” Instead of vacating only the felony murder conviction, as McElrath had requested, the state Supreme Court vacated both the malice murder and felony murder verdicts. On remand, McElrath argued the double jeopardy clause of the 5th Amendment prohibited Georgia from retrying him for malice murder in light of the jury’s prior “not guilty by reason of insanity” verdict on that charge. The trial court rejected this argument, and McElrath again appealed.
The Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed. The court recognized “[u]nder the general principles of double jeopardy,” the verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity “would appear to be an acquittal that precludes retrial, as not guilty verdicts are generally inviolate.” But the court concluded the acquittal at issue in this case “los[t] considerable steam” when considered alongside the verdict of guilty but mentally ill. Because the verdicts were repugnant, “both [were] rendered valueless.” In the court’s view, repugnant verdicts were no different for double jeopardy purposes from “a situation in which a mistrial is declared after a jury is unable to reach a verdict.”
Justice Andrew Pinson concurred, noting he could not “quite shake the doubt” that the court’s ruling was inconsistent “with the quite-absolute-sounding bar against retrying a defendant who has secured an acquittal verdict.” He joined the majority because “[t]his lingering doubt [was] not enough to justify dissenting from an otherwise unanimous Court.” The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari.
After evaluation, the jury’s verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity on the malice murder charge was an acquittal for purposes of the double jeopardy clause. The clause bars retrial of McElrath on that charge. The judgment of the Supreme Court of Georgia was reversed, and the case was remanded for further proceedings.