Serviceable Building

In Blue Compass RV, L.L.C. v. Twin City Fire Insurance Co., the Fifth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a $1.25 million crime-insurance suit,

After receiving a phishing email purporting to be from its construction contractor, an RV dealer updated the contractor’s payment information and remitted a progress payment to the fraudster’s account. The dealer’s insurance arrier paid the smaller sub-limit  for deception fraud involving the “purchase of goods or services,” rather than a larger limit. The dispute turned on whether the contractor’s construction work was a sale of “services” within that sub-limit.

The court rejected the insured’s argument that “services” should be read narrowly to mean only “useful labor that does not produce a tangible commodity.” Although some dictionary definitions support that reading, the Court concluded that in the context of the policy as a whole, a broader ordinary meaning controlled. Under that meaning, the contractor’s construction work qualified as services even though its end product was a tangible building. No. 25-10894 (June 5, 2026).