It was an explosion, but not the kind of explosion that's covered by homeowner's insurance.
That was the conclusion reached by a Palm Beach County, Florida court last week after six years of litigation, according to the Broward Palm Beach New Times.
From the Times:
Back in 2008, an elderly woman's undiscovered body had decomposed so badly inside her apartment that it exploded. Fluid from the ruptured corpse began to seep through the floor and into the apartment below, which led the owner of that unit to sue her insurance company, claiming that it needed to pay for the damages.
But State Farm successfully argued that that type of "explosion" didn't fall under Judy Rodrigo's policy.
According to the New York Daily News, the court found that, "The plain meaning of the term 'explosion' does not include a decomposing body's cells explosively expanding, causing leakage of bodily fluids. In short, although novel in her attempt to do so, the insured could not establish that the decomposing body was tantamount to an explosion."
As for how the body could have gone undiscovered for weeks, in 2009 Rodrigo's neighbor Nicholas Colangelo told Courthouse News that the woman lived alone and had no family.