Woman loses insurance battle over exploding corpse

A woman whose apartment was damaged when her neighbour's corpse exploded has been ordered to pay for her own repairs.

Judy Rodrigo, of Palm Beach County, Florida, lost the nearly six-year legal battle with insurers on Wednesday after a judge ruled that her insurance policy did not cover bodily explosions.

Ms Rodrigo claimed that Keystone Condominium Association staff failed to discover the elderly woman's body for two weeks after her death, leaving her remains to be eaten by her pet dog and finally bursting.

"I don't know how the dog stayed alive. It must have been at her for some time," another neighbour in the complex, Nicholas Colangelo, told Court House News in 2009.

According to Ms Rodrigo's suit, the neighbour's body was so decayed that gases caused the abdomen to bloat and eventually explode, leaking blood, bodily fluid and gas into her apartment.

Ms Rodrigo said she was forced to foot the bill for repairs to her apartment roof, walls and floor after insurer State Farm refused to award her personal property damage payout.

The insurer offered Ms Rodrigo a sum for the clean-up but she refused, seeking full coverage.

State Farm argued that a decomposing body did not constitute an "explosion", as included in their cover – and Judge Melanie May agreed.

"Rather than stretching common sense, the trial court correctly gave the term 'explosion' its 'plain and unambiguous meaning as understood by the man on the street'," May wrote. 

"The plain meaning of the term 'explosion' does not include a decomposing body's cells explosively expanding, causing leakage of bodily fluids."

Source: Daily Mail
Author: Chloe Ross, Approving editor: Matthew Henry