Her neighbor’s corpse exploded. Now Judy Rodrigo has to pay for the damages to her apartment. After six years of legal battle, a Florida court ruled Rodrigo’s insurance policy did not cover damage caused by bursting corpses.
In 2008, an elderly woman who lived alone with her two dogs died in her apartment and her body remained undiscovered for two weeks, reports the Broward Palm Beach New Times. The corpse decayed and festered until it burst, leaking corrosive fluids into Rodrigo’s downstairs apartment. She was finally discovered when the stench reached neighboring units.
Rodrigo paid out of pocket to repair her apartment, which she said had to be gutted. The smell apparently lingered. She blamed the condo association for not discovering the corpse, and filed suit against her insurance company, State Farm, which refused to cover the full cost of repair.
“Another unit owner’s body exploded thereby causing blood and bodily fluids to go into the adjoining condominium and the unit owned by Judy Rodrigo,” the lawsuit read.
The court ruled last week in favor of State Farm, saying Rodrigo failed to establish the incident was indeed “tantamount to an explosion.”