A federal court on Monday held California’s State Insurance Compensation Fund has no obligation to cover a series of claims from three porn actors against Cybernet for allegedly causing them to contract human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) during film shoots in 2013.
Cybernet, a San Francisco-based porn studio, was founded in 1998 and currently operates a series of adult-websites including Kink.com which primarily features content involving bondage, domination, sadism, and masochism (BDSM). Actors John Doe, Cameron Adams and Joshua Rogers sued the company in 2015 for creating a dangerous and unsanitary work environment by failing to test performers for sexually transmitted diseases before each shoot, discouraging the use of condoms, and inviting random members of the public to participate in intimate group activities. The actors further allege Cybernet intentionally misrepresented the shoots were safe by “requiring” the use of protection, subjected actors to physical assault without consent, and intentionally inflicted emotional distress by creating a situation where the spread of sexually transmitted diseases was virtually certain to occur.
After Cybernet demanded that its insurer, the State Fund, cover the actors’ tort claims, the State Fund fired back, arguing it already paid the actors medical expenses under California’s workers’ compensation system and owed no further duty. U.S. District Court Judge for the Northern District of California Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers agreed and found the actors’ exclusive remedy for their negligence-based causes of action came within the workers’ compensation system.
Further, while the actors’ allegations of intentional misconduct were not necessarily relegated to workers’ compensation, Rogers found the insurance policy’s exclusion for “damages or bodily injury intentionally caused or aggravated by [Cybernet]” exempted claims of intentional torts. Cybernet argued case law requires insurers to provide conclusive evidence demonstrating an exclusion of coverage applies and such evidence did not exist for a myriad of reasons, including the language of the policy itself which expressly covered “bodily injury by disease of an employee.” Rogers was not convinced and cited precedent which indicated that even though an insurance policy can expressly cover a disease contracted on the job, claims that the employer intentionally caused or aggravated the disease are a different story.
Cybernet has requested leave to file a motion for reconsideration.