On March 17, 2026, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals held in General Star Indemnity Co. v. Toy Quest Ltd. that the commercial general liability insurer had no duty to defend an “abuse of process” claim related to the insured’s intervention in a separate garnishment action by a third party.
The underlying claim involved a third-party lawsuit by ASI Inc., who sued the insured for “abuse of process” stemming from the insured’s intervention in a separate garnishment proceeding. According to ASI, the insured’s intervention included filing a “frivolous opposition” and entering an appearance “with the ulterior motive of helping conceal assets” in the already-filed proceeding. The CGL policy required the insurer to defend and indemnify the insured for certain personal injury arising from malicious prosecution and other specifically enumerated torts. The policy, however, did not expressly list “abuse of process” — the claim at issue.
The insurer agreed to defend the insured from the third-party suit under a reservation of rights and sought a declaratory judgment that it had no duty to defend the abuse of process claim. The insured and ASI both argued that the policy imposed a duty to defend and afforded coverage for the claims as a “personal injury arising out of … malicious prosecution.” The insurer argued that “abuse of process” is a tort separate and distinct from “malicious prosecution” and therefore the insured was not entitled to coverage for the claims alleged. The U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota granted the insurer’s motion for judgment on the pleadings.
Through de novo review, the Eighth Circuit applied Minnesota insurance interpretive rules to determine whether the policy implied a duty to defend the insured. The court interpreted the policy in the “plain, ordinary sense” of the policy terms as “a reasonable person … would have understood the words to mean.” In doing so, it applied the principle of expressio unius (i.e., “the expression of specific things in a contract implies the exclusion of all not expressed.”). Because the policy expressly listed several torts for which the insurer did offer coverage, including false arrest, malicious prosecution, wrongful eviction from private occupancy, slander, libel, and violation of the right to privacy, the court held that a reasonable person would understand that the parties did not intend coverage for unlisted, separate torts. The court additionally reasoned that under applicable law, the claims for malicious prosecution and abuse of process were sufficiently distinct that abuse of process did not overlap with or fall within the scope of malicious prosecution.
The court also considered the insured’s argument that the facts underlying the expressly pleaded causes of action could still trigger the duty to defend, even if the causes of action were not themselves covered. While the court noted that a duty to defend may exist even where a covered claim is not expressly named, it found that even as alleged, the facts plainly did not describe or support a claim for malicious prosecution, one of the torts that was specifically listed in the policy. Under well-established Minnesota law, a “malicious prosecution” claim requires that a party bring or institute an action. Specifically, malicious prosecution requires that the challenged action be: (1) “brought without probable cause or reasonable belief that the plaintiff would ultimately prevail on the merits”; (2) “instituted and prosecuted with malicious intent”; and (3) “terminated in favor of the defendant.” The court noted that the litigation had already been filed by a third party when the insured intervened and reasoned that a dictionary definition of “prosecution” required an affirmative initiation or bringing of claims, rather than merely opposing claims that others had already filed. Since the insured did not initiate the garnishment action at issue, the court held that the facts underpinning ASI’s allegations do not relate to the listed claim for malicious prosecution.
