Budding marijuana farmer causes uninsured fire
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If you ever feel the inclination to turn your basement into a marijuana production factory, you might want to tell your insurer first.
That was the lesson learned by a Michigan homeowner who ultimately had her fire claim turned down by her insurer, Nationwide Mutual Fire Insurance Co., after her then-husband had an accident in his marijuana lab that destroyed her house.
The woman bought the house in 2005 and obtained a homeowners policy from Nationwide, according to a ruling by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Detroit. Around 2010, her then-husband obtained a medical marijuana card and starting growing marijuana in the basement for himself and others.
He spent about $20,000 on growing equipment, including “tons of lighting,” according to the court ruling. Later the husband learned of a process known as “butane extraction,” which involves drawing liquid butane through chopped marijuana leaves to extract tetrahydrocannabinol, the principal psychoactive constituent of marijuana, and produce “honey oil,” a THC-rich substance.
Unfortunately, in 2012 while making some honey oil he lit a flame to smoke some and it ignited butane that had not yet evaporated.
After initially paying some of the fire claim, Nationwide denied it on several grounds, including that the homeowner had not informed the insurer of the change in use of the residence and sought repayment of the nearly $140,000 it had paid.
The owner said she did not know that her then-husband was using butane or that butane was inflammable. In addition, she responded that she could not be expected to tell her insurer every time she changed something at the house, otherwise she’d have to call Nationwide “every time they bought a houseplant or had visitors,” court papers say.
The court disagreed, saying the rather than adding the one houseplant at a time, they had “approximately 28 marijuana plants growing in the basement.”
And so it seems the claim went up in smoke.
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