splitting the twenty minutes ten minutes  says we have before you this morning due to the conflict created between the first district and the second district by the first district's decision in founders versus munoz consolidated with respect to the application and interpretation of the reasonable belief exclusion contained in founders automobile policy and safeways policy in century national versus tracy which came out of the second district in two thousand and three the court clearly stated that the reasonable belief exclusion clearly and unambiguously encompassed unlicensed drivers and without a valid driver's license one simply could not formulate the reason a wall belief that he or she was entitled to drive a vehicle in the state of illinois this exclusion is an ambiguous your honour's and does not violate public policy i will deal with the ambiguity issue miss hillis and will deal with the public policy issue your honour's from the time that tracy came down in two thousand and three until the first district rule munoz some six years later the term entitled had an established legal meaning merely because the decision and tracy is relatively young does not give it any less weight between two thousand and three and two thousand and nine no appellate court had ever challenge to tracy's interpretation or application of the reasonable belief exclusion of this court in rich versus principled life hold that a contract term may be unambiguous because it has acquired an established legal meaning and it is our position that the reasonable belief exclusion has had a stablished had an established legal suspension i'm talking about coverage on that if you like so oh i see we do not exclude coverage or seek to preclude coverage based upon intoxication that is not the intent or purpose of this cla received the right the secretary of state has in place certain practices and procedures that they utilize to notify the individual whose license is about to be suspended of the date that the suspension will take place and this notice is sent to the last known address of the driver which is supposed to cover the owner i believe it's the owner of the vehicle a driver of the driver's license would not have been suspended license has been right the owner would have been given notice i understand what your honor saying in those cases if there is a reasonable explanation offered by the driver as to why he or she does not know that his or her driver's license is suspended that is that is certainly a fact which would weigh into the analysis the exclusion is deals with a reasonable belief that you are entitled to drive if this person genuinely does not know that their driver's license is suspended reasonable but isn't that what you suggest it's not it's not simply founders your honor that that reads this explosion this way and all the other insurance  well century national obviously safeway this exclusion appears in most if not all automobile policies across the country the difference is that in the founders policy it is an exclusion which is only reached if the driver is an insured let me be more clear in our ensuring agreement we cover the name didn't shirred and  permissive driver if the driver is non permissive you never reach the exclusion because they do not fall within our ensuring agreement and in most of the other states they have and i so i'm i'm tunder stand it's say even if they don't have it valid driver's license yes and it is the license which becomes an issue in our policy when you reach the exclusion once you've established that the person driving is permissive and therefore an insured then you look to the exclusions to see if any exclusions apply which might take that person out of coverage so it's a two step process right it's a two step process and then you get back back to my car about the owner of the car  had three parking tickets that's sufficient it should be it should then presume that it's licenses automatically been suspended people are charged with knowing the law so he should know that three that you're feeling them and then the insurance company takes a position and those would be facts that would be put in evidence and some type of decoration is through whether or not the insurance problem the insurance companies  determination that exclusion applies i mean they can certainly put in evidence that they have no reasonable belief under all these you know certain hypotheticals right right and then a determination would be made absolutely  may please the court and counsel my name's hilson and i represent safeway insurance company but the facts are safer case a little bit different from the founders case in our case we issued of insurance policy to mr ramirez however it was  fernandez who was driving the vehicle at the time of the accident mr fernandez was not listed on the application for the safeway policy and mr fernandez never had an illinois driver's license and i believe in all of these consolidated cases however all state paid for the damages and injuries that were sustained by the other vehicles and people involved in the accident either that under their uninsured motorist coverage or medical payments etc and no court in illinois has found this exclusion the reasonable belief exclusion to be against public policy a ruling by this court that the exclusion violates public policy i believe would solve violate illinois public policy of keeping unlicensed drivers off the road on the one hand the state and the legislature as an act of the statute that prohibits unlicensed drivers from driving on illinois highways on the other hand is the legislature has also enacted a statute that requires insurance coverage for all of these permissive drivers would in fact be licensed drivers as required by law and the legislature did not intend to take unlicensed drivers off of the road under one statute and then simply put them right back on the road under the other statute for permissive coverage the legislature did not say you can't drive with without a license in illinois but it's ok to drive without a license  as long as you have insurance under illinois law as stated by just as hampshire in the progress of universal versus liberty mutual case insurance exclusions are allowed in illinois unless they are prohibited by law this exclusion has nap and prohibited by law there is no statute requiring coverage for unlicensed drivers and there is no statute or hitting exclusions for unlicensed drivers in fact illinois case law has recognized and up held exclusions which in effect have excluded coverage for unlicensed drivers there is a case off holding named driver exclusions where a member of the family or better of the household is on license but the other members of the household want insurance coverage and those exclusions are called even if the excluded name driver has permission to use the vehicle the illinois insurance code even allows insurance companies to cancel policies if any member of a named insurance household has a license has his driver's license suspended or revoked i think it's significant that in the seven years six or seven years since the second district decided the case of century national insurance versus tracy but legislature has not enacted any statute or amended any statute or the insurance code to change the law stated in tracy not acted to prohibit the reasonable leaf exclusion or the way it was applied in tracy and has not enacted any statute barring appropriating exclusions for unlicensed drivers had the legislature intended or wanted to prohibit such exclusions it could have done so this court should not change the law with the legislature has chosen not to do so if an exclusion results in any gap in coverage between liability coverage and uninsured motorist coverage as just as common or stated in progressive universal versus you liberty mutual that is a matter for the legislature to address that is not a matter for this court to address it's not for this court to change the law to prevent any possible gap in coverage and i would just briefly like to address a couple of the questions that you posed to michele medine just as freeman for the driver who's not aware there's a slice and has been suspended i believe that driver will be covered because they have tried her then would he have a reasonable leaf that he was entitle to drive simply because he was not aware that his license was suspended and reasonably reasonable ness i think in every instance is a question of fact to be determined under the circumstances and it's not to be founders or safeway or any other insurance company deciding that it would be the court in back particular case to decide whether they have tried ever had a reasonable belief that he was entitled to drive  and as far as the dui that's not the issue here that's not an issue at all here none of these insurers have excluded coverage for drunken driving and i think if any insurer were to do that to attempt at under this statute the court would probably prevent that from happening but again it would be a question of fact for the court in that instance  i would urge this court to reverse the decision of the first district teleport a from the judgment of the trial court and adopt a multi factor approach in applying these reasonable belief exclusions such as the five factor test adopted by the maryland court in general accident versus perry and i think that the second district did in fact  consider those same factors in its decisions in in tracy and economy fire versus state farm although it didn't come out and say it was applying multi factor test i think you can see by the considerations that it didn't affect  and i would ask i would urge as court to do the same the tracy opinion is well reasoned and there's no public policy reasons to prohibit this explosion thank you no reasonable belief entitled to use exclusion contained in the founders and the safeway policies do not apply to a liability insurance cover situation involving the clear permits of user of the vehicle either the owner himself or someone who had permission if founders and safeway wanted to have that exclusion in their policy at a minimum they had to release put the word legally entitled to drive in their exclusion they don't say th just say reasonable belief entitle to use that language just not on ambiguously preclude coverage to someone whose license may not have been in effect at the time of the accident what they really should have done is what safeway used to do and have an actual unlicensed driver exclusion policy if they had that it be crystal clear there were no question about it we wouldn't be here telling you that the scoot is ambiguous instead this exclusion a reasonable interpretation of this exclusion is simply another way of stating you have to have permission yet you to be the owner of the vehicle or have permission in order to have a reasonable belief that you're entitled to use that vehicle as this court knows if there is a reasonable interpretation of an insurance policy provision which grants coverage that is the interpretation that the courts are to imply here there is a reasonable interpretation it provides coverage that's what the  so instead they're sort of trying to vaguely ambiguously get around what they're trying to say because it wouldn't be enforced and have courts say all of that must mean you have to have a valid license at the time of the accident the you know an attempt to get around the fact that tracy and economy versus state farm century versus tracy is not in conflict this case that's uninsured motorist case has nothing to do with mandatory liability insurance it has nothing to do with any injured victims maybe the exclusions clear enough to preclude coverage to the insurer himself was attempting to claim benefits for his own injuries under his policy that's not what we're dealing with here all these cases are liability insurance coverage cases economy versus state farm the other case before this case that enforce the exclusion that was just simply a clear no permission situation in that case the driver had lost his license because he was convicted of a then got access to his girlfriend's car by hitting her knocking her to the ground taking the key out of a pocket and then driving drunk in that situation he didn't have permission drive the car obviously so he just supplied the exclusion in the way it on a bigger slee does apply to non permission situations so there is no prior conflict in the law to the munoz decision the munoz case was the first and only case in illinois dealing with liability insurance coverage for a clear permissive user a driver who herself was a license and she was excluded specifically in the policy right munoz's a is a is one case is different than the other ones really and in that case there was a named driver which the legislature has said is in force of all that's directly in the statute but we as you see are cross appeal on that issue the name driver's question the legislature has it has and incorporated a specific limitation on the situation the recession back my question comes from the i can tell somebody you can use my vehicle they can know that they don't have a license right and they should not have a reasonable belief that they are entitled to use my vehicle even though i gave them permission right now they have a they have a reserve belief that they are entitled to use your car because you gunpoint mission they may not have a reason with their legally entitled to drive a car but that doesn't say well they should have a reasonable belief should they that they're not entitled to drive any car including their own they don't have a legal right to do so that's correct but the key word is legal right they have permission entitlement right the owners here their  car or someone gave them the right to use their property but you're right they don't have a legal right under the secretary of state rules about valid license as but that's not what the exclusion says it doesn't say anything about legal rights doesn't say like a clear exclusion would unlicensed drivers are not covered you know it goes it goes further than legal right it could be but it's certainly way include legal right when it a reasonable belief i think exclusions are to be narrowly construed your honor and if they don't put the word legally in title they can to say all that includes every conceivable situation where someone might be able to figure out that they're not entitled to drive tell me again what's ambiguous about that in my example you can use my vehicle i don't know that the person or maybe i do i don't know that person doesn't have a license or license revoked or whatever the situation is how applying that without a reasonable belief that the person isn't time to do so where is the ambiguity because the exclusion doesn't talk about legal entitlement to drive a car closure doesn't refer to legal entitlement valid license those words are not contained in the exclusion you know i'm not questioning that those words are just trying to see what your argument is just where the ambiguity lies that's exactly where it lies if they put the word legally entitled i wouldn't have a very good ambiguity argument if they put that exclusion saying unlicensed drivers because i have no ambiguity argument and all we dealing with is the second part of our argument which is if you find that that cannot ride any of you without a license that's absolutely correct and there are all kinds of why wouldn't sanctions against someone who does drive a vehicle but what about i mean why why would you have to with the words legally entitled if you can't drive at all you don't have a license i mean that's it's a common knowledge it's generally known in the definition because the intact use goes into says you have a reason to believe you're entitled to use a vehicle and that recently means you have permission from the owner to drive it it doesn't say anything about the clear you know state laws which which have prohibitions against people driving without power license when the same like lawsuit the owner of the car i mean you could own a lot of cars and no one can those cars even the owner without a license so even the permission the owner would give to someone would be evil way or we're not talking about whether the person has violat used in the license setting doesn't mean it couldn't be used in another setting let me give you another hypothetical i can joe drive your car the owner doesn't know joe yeah sure here joe can take it you know if he's just going to store a lot of take the car the owner doesn't know th reasonable belief that he is not entitled to drive a car or he doesn't have a license and now in this case you're going to you're going to put in what well let me just go back to will my initial statement just because it's broad doesn't mean it's ambiguous i think that there could be and maybe i came up with one other settings outside of the license standard you would say again while he can't legally drive a car either why didn't they put that would create an ambiguity as there were somebody would have a reasonable belief they couldn't drive the car but there was not a legal reason why they could drive a car permission they didn't have permission from the owner to drive the car like like the  let's let's break this down they can't get in the car and drive it and be insured unless they're a perp or miss abuser in the first place all right yes so the argument that well this could also mean permission wilmet wait a minute they're not on the hook for anybody to get in their car unless they are either the insured or permissive user anyway or they're not so again doesn't that somewhat defeat the ambiguity argument that this somehow could go to a permissive user they have to be a permissive user before even get to the exclusion it's very got insurance policies to to have to augment your policy defenses with exclusions and it happens all the time you know you just emphasize the fact is no coverage for four non corrosive users by putting in an exclusion there's  expressly talk about no coverage for noncommercial drivers it's not does it doesn't mean that that exclusion now covers people to have licenses but otherwise have permission why wouldn't this interpretation be adverse to public policy i by no i can't drive a car because i don't have a license if i can if i can flimflam thomas and let me drive this car while i mean doesn't that mean that in the world and around with the state says about you you don't have a license you don't drive a car lots of laws that exist to prevent people from driving drunk or from driving without a license it's not like there are courts that are hyper says garrett it's not up for the insurance company or run a car companies to try to police the rules of the  bunch of them in our brief there's fourteen year olds who had coverage and the appellate courts affirmed that coverage of that ruling for coverage because they were found to be a permissive user has never been a problem for the courts in the state to have it's really because of the the strength of the  mandatory insurance law we want liability insurance to be there for injured victims and if someone's driving a car drunk or on license or crossing the centerline or driving recklessly or whatever else you do wrong we have the rules of the road are you know it really doesn't your honor i mean you shouldn't be requiring the victim to now have to go to their own insurance policy if they have one and they could claim one of their own insurance policy and potentially suffer the increased premiums that might areas who use public transportation they're not going to have uninsured motorist coverage to go to they're going to be completely on able to recover from their injuries in those situations like yours i suppose you could probably buy a on his policy that's true but those you don't see too many of those  has already been uncontroverted evidence that all these drivers were permissive users of those cars and as to the munoz case we asked if you overall that portion of the appellate court which found that founder's doesn't have to comply with this statute which expressly states situation where the named insured octane to policy her unlicensed husband was identified as a household member on the policy but he had never had a license miss munoz or miss flora's excuse me she did the right thing she excluded her husband from coverage under the policy and she signed the application her declarations page listed her husband as an excluded driver and for all intents and purposes this was their intent this is also clear from the fact that approximately thirteen days after the loss that her husband was involved in he obtained his driver's license and she requested that the excluded driver  endorsement be lifted and that he be included as as an additional driver excuse me on the policy and that is exactly what happened at no point in the litigation did either mr munoz or his wife come to court and say unexploded driver the facts in the case were that he was nobody came to court to contest that there were no factual contests put forth by allstate or any other party challenging the status of mr munoz on the date of the accident he was unlicensed had never had a license and was excluded on the policy while the insurance card statute as we call it requires an indication of excluded drivers  the first district was correct in as in so far as holding that the failure of the insurance company to dot all the i's and cross all the t's does not and large coverage it doesn't penalize the insurance so the fact remains if you if you agree with the founders and safeway on the reasonable belief exclusion mr munoz was unlicensed on the date of the accident than we would be successful in that case as well under the reasonable belief exclusion it would i pled excluded driver in the alternative in the in the in the pleadings with respect to the use of the word legally the same argument was made in tracy and and the court rejected it saying that it was of no consequence the absence of the word legally and reading through the states that counsel cited as a parent already for his opinion or his position i found that these states do not support all states possession at all these states they did not find that the exclusion was ambiguous because they were the ice so type of policies they looked at permission in the context of that exclusion simply because permission wasn't part of the in sharm agreement this would be the first opportunity that the court would have had to consider the issue of permission when you jump over to the exclusions column so the analysis is different because the policies are different but there were plenty of out of state cases where the court was not asked to decide whether an absence of a license was was enough and so they didn't reach that issue counsel simply does not have the support in the country that he would have this court believe it also cannot be this it cannot people draw of the state that permission alone isn't enough if you are otherwise insurers have or have a right to limit the risks they are willing to undertake the founder seeks to limit its rests to duly licensed insurance which means the named insured or permissive drivers counsel misspeaks when he says that in all of the founders cases they were permissive drivers this is not true in three of our five cases the driver was the name didn't shirt commission was not an issue how the first district respectfully could have said that this exclusion is ambiguous and that it applies only if you didn't have a reasonable belief that you were permissive or permitted to drive it makes no logical sense when you're talking about the named insured who does not require a grant of permission from the named insurer didn't permitted whatever the phrase would be remember the point you made yes i do and then he then he commented that we now know why because he and i made out of understood this i want to get this straight that the department of insurance somehow prohibits yeah kind of exclusion is that what he said and if that's what he the only explain your position on that i believe that's what he said but you don't understand it because there is nothing in the records of that a fact this is something that he raised for the first time on appeal so and whatever he's put in his brief from the department of insurance i don't recall there being anything in it to that effect but if there is it certainly wasn't in the trial court he's raising it for the first time in this court and i think the arguments waived b s is to your knowledge as a matter of law and illinois language to say those who are legally entitled i don't i don't think we would be prohibited from doing that over say point added the six reasonable belief exclusion to its policy in direct response to the tracy opinion we knew from the tracy opinion that the courts were going to construe this as excluding coverage from licensed drivers we were safe if you're relying on that law and that's exactly why i was put in the safeway policy so for counsel to raise the southern issue on appeal i think this court doesn't have a chance to hash out the facts we don't have a chance to hash out the facts i think they've waived it and they should not be part of this court's decision the same with the argument about the department insurance that's something that there is saying on appeal for the first time it's waived i want to clarify one point in the instance say you discussed justice garman where you flimflammed justice thomas into letting him letting you drive his car even though you know that not licensed although the reasonably fix solution would exclude coverage for the unlicensed driver just as carmen justice thomas you'd still be covered she takes your car she's not license and another point i'd like to make contrary to what mr morris said never say from a night of safeway in our belief founders trying to police the roads or use of cars on the road but we are trying to limit our wrists it's reasonable to let the insurance company limits wrists to qualify drivers if the secretary of state thinks someone is not qualified to drive why should safely or founder's or any other insurance company have to cover the risk of that driver getting on the road and causing an accident in conclusion i would just ask what the court affirmed the decision of the trial court reversed the decision of the appellate court and it again i think the decision of the second district court in tracy is well reasoned and i would hope that this court would adopt a similar stance thank you