[PUBLISH] In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit

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No. 22-11776 ____________________

SHILOH CHRISTIAN CENTER, Plaintiff-Appellant, versus ASPEN SPECIALTY INSURANCE COMPANY,

Defendant-Appellee.

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Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida D.C. Docket No. 6:20-cv-01774-CEM-LHP ____________________ USCA11 Case: 22-11776 Document: 45-1 Date Filed: 04/13/2023 Page: 2 of 16

2 Opinion of the Court 22-11776

Before JILL PRYOR, NEWSOM, and GRANT, Circuit Judges. NEWSOM, Circuit Judge: This is an insurance case. Fear not, keep reading. In deter- mining whether a pair of insurance policies cover losses resulting from “named windstorms,” we have to decide an important and (as it turns out) interesting question about the interpretation of written legal instruments: What is a court to do when all the surest proof of contracting parties’ subjective intentions and expectations flatly contradicts the surest indicators of an agreement’s objective legal meaning? At the risk of oversimplifying, Aspen Specialty Insurance Company, a billion-dollar insurance conglomerate, has essentially all of the subjective-intent evidence on its side: The records of the contracting parties’ course of dealing, contractual negotiations, and policy applications strongly suggest that the parties intended and expected that the policies would exclude damage caused by named windstorms. But Aspen’s policyholder—Shiloh Christian Center, a small Florida church—has the text: However clear the parties’ subjective intentions or expectations, the policies do not, by their plain terms, exclude named-windstorm-related losses. What, then? The district court found the evidence of the parties’ subjective intent overwhelming and accordingly granted summary judgment to Aspen. We hold, to the contrary, that, un- der Florida law—as in the law more generally—in the event of a conflict between clear text, on the one hand, and even compelling USCA11 Case: 22-11776 Document: 45-1 Date Filed: 04/13/2023 Page: 3 of 16

22-11776 Opinion of the Court 3

evidence of extra-textual “intent,” on the other, the latter must give way to the former Cf. CRI-Leslie, LLC v. Comm’r of Internal Rev- enue, 882 F.3d 1026, 1033 (11th Cir. 2018). We therefore reverse the district court’s decision and remand for further proceedings. I A In 2016 and 2017, respectively, Hurricanes Matthew and Irma tore through Melbourne, Florida, pummeling Shiloh Chris- tian Center. On both occasions, the storms peeled back the church’s roof, allowing rain to soak the exposed structure. 1 In 2015, the year before Matthew hit, Shiloh’s property-in- surance policy with Aspen Specialty Insurance Company covered losses resulting from so-called named windstorms—i.e., hurri- canes. In the middle of that year, though, Shiloh specifically asked Aspen to stop covering named-windstorm-related losses. Aspen agreed