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Believe it or not, I expect that in the end the claim will get paid. Gokey was working in his capacity as a city employee using the city's vehicle. There's no exclusion in the typical commercial auto policy for an employee damaging their personal vehicle. It sounds like the city has self-insured the coverage, which does give them some leeway over what claims get paid, but a judge is going to look at the prevailing insurance language and find no such stupidity exclusion.
There's a good reason why the city should not be allowed to get away with denying this claim. The city obviously did not take due care to make sure that employee vehicles were protected from the dump trucks. If any other employee had been driving the truck, they would have paid the claim. If it was a willful act, that's one thing and shouldn't be paid, but if it was the accident like it seems to be, then the city needs to pony up the money.
This is humorous, but the city's definitely in the wrong here from the facts as stated in the story.
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