Case Name: HARTFORD INSURANCE COMPANY, A CORPORATION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT, RESPONDENT, v. ALLSTATE INSURANCE COMPANY AND JOSEPH YUHAS, APPELLANTS
Court: Supreme Court of New Jersey
Jurisdiction: New Jersey
Decision Date: 1975-11-07
Citations: 68 N.J. 430
Docket Number: 
Parties: HARTFORD INSURANCE COMPANY, A CORPORATION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT, RESPONDENT, v. ALLSTATE INSURANCE COMPANY AND JOSEPH YUHAS, APPELLANTS.
Judges: 
Reporter: New Jersey Reports
Volume: 68
Pages: 430–440

Head Matter:
HARTFORD INSURANCE COMPANY, A CORPORATION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT, RESPONDENT, v. ALLSTATE INSURANCE COMPANY AND JOSEPH YUHAS, APPELLANTS.
Argued May 27, 1975
Decided November 7, 1975.
Mr. Paul E. Anderson argued the cause for Joseph Yuhas, appellant (Messrs. Kovacs, Anderson, Horowitz and Rader, attorneys).
Mr. William P. Kirkpatrick argued the cause for respondent (Messrs. Kirkpatrick and Rothman, attorneys).

Opinion:
The opinion of the Court was delivered by
Mountain, J.
The appellant, Joseph Yuhas, was injured as the result of an automobile accident caused by the negligence of an uninsured driver of a second car. At the time of the collision, Yuhas was a passenger in a car insured by Allstate Insurance Company and he himself was covered by a policy issued by Hartford Insurance Company. Both policies contained "uninsured motorist endorsements," as required by N. J. S. A. 17:28-1.1, providing coverage for injury caused by an uninsured driver.
Allstate conceded its liability and paid Yuhas the full amount of its uninsured motorist coverage, $10,000. Although this sum was inadequate to compensate Yuhas for his injuries, Hartford declined to make any payment, basing its refusal on the ground that its policy provision limited its obligation to those occasions where the amount required by statute — $10,000 — was not available to the claimant under any other policy. To test the question of Hartford's liability, Yuhas instituted suit and was successful at the trial level. The Appellate Division, however, reversed and entered, judgment in Hartford's favor. Hartford Insurance Co. v. Allstate Insurance Co., 127 N. J. Super. 460 (1974).
Argument before the Appellate' Division took place at the same time as argument in an unrelated suit involving different parties but raising the identical issue. In this latter case, Motor Club of America Insurance Company was the carrier and one Phillips the claimant. The two cases were scheduled for argument at the same time before the same part of the Appellate Division solely because they presented the identical legal issue. Following the decisions in the two cases, both favorable to the carriers, the claimant Phillips sought certification as to the judgment in favor of Motor Club of America Insurance Company. His petition was granted. 65 N. J. 556 (1974). The claimant Yuhas, who is now the appellant before us, did not seek certification with respect to the judgment in his suit entered in favor of Hartford. In due course this Court reversed the judgment of the Appellate Division in the Phillips case, holding the asserted limitation of liability to be repugnant to N. J. S. A. 17:28-1.1. Motor Club of America Insurance Co. v. Phillips, 66 N. J. 277 (1974). Yuhas then moved in the Appellate Division for a rehearing, but the application was denied as being untimely. See B. 2 :11-6a. We granted his petition for certification, 67 N. J. 93 (1975) and now affirm.
Yuhas claims that to deny him relief constitutes a grave injustice and results in a windfall to the carrier. We have concluded otherwise. It is conceded that after conferring with his attorney, he made a deliberate choice to forego any review of the adverse Appellate Division judgment and, accordingly, did not seek certification. It cannot be said that in making this decision he, or his attorney, was relying upon any veil-settled rule of lav. Indicative of the unsettled state of lav vithin our ovn jurisdiction vas the contrast betveen McFarland v. Motor Club of America Insurance Co., 120 N. J. Super. 554 (Ch. Div. 1972), in vhich a decision vas rendered favorable to the claimant, and the appellate decisions in the Yuhas and Phillips cases favorable to the carriers. Furthermore, decisions involving similar or identical statutes throughout the country had reached varying results, the majority determining the issue in favor of coverage. Motor Club of America Insurance Co. v. Phillips, supra, 66 N. J. at 288-90.
Appellant urges that this case can and should be brought vithin the favor of the rule folloved by this Court in E & K Agency, Inc. v. Van Dyke, 60 N. J. 160 (1972). We there held that a party to a suit vho failed to join in an appeal vas nevertheless entitled to the benefit of a favorable judgment of an appellate court.
Recently, in Pierce v. Cook & Co., Inc., 518 F. 2d 720 (10th Cir. 1975) the Court of Appeals granted a similar type of relief vhen faced vith rather unusual factual circumstances. Three persons, all occupants of the same ear, sustained serious injuries in an accident vhich occurred in Oklahoma. They instituted separate suits, one of vhich vas removed to the federal court on the basis of diversity of citizenship. Applying vhat vas then conceded to be the lav of the State of Oklahoma, the federal district court found for the defendant and the judgment vas affirmed on appeal. The state court judge before vhom the other tvo suits vere brought also ruled in favor of the defendant for the same reason. Plaintiffs in the state court suits appealed and the Supreme Court of Oklahoma reversed, at the same time overruling the case upon vhich the federal and state courts had relied in ruling in favor of the defendant. The reversal vas folloved by a settlement favorable to the plaintiffs-appellants. The plaintiff in the federal court suit then applied for relief, basing his application upon Federal Rule 60(b) which specifies five stated grounds for relief and then concludes, "(6) any other reason justifying relief from the operation of the judgment." The court granted relief, emphasizing the fact that the plaintiffs in the various suits had all been injured at the same time in a single accident and that to deny relief to one but not the others would be manifestly offensive to notions of elementary justice. Considerable reliance was placed upon Gondeck v. Pan American World Airways, Inc., 382 U. S. 257, 86 S. Ct. 153, 15 L. Ed. 2d 21 (1961), wherein relief was forthcoming because different federal courts had arrived at divergent results with respect to the claims of persons injured simultaneously in a common disaster.
As we have indicated, the court in Pierce laid great stress upon the occurrence of a common accident. It also noted and distinguished the earlier decision in the same circuit. Collins v. City of Wichita, 254 F. 2d 837 (10th Cir. 1958) in which relief had been denied. There the plaintiff had originally been unsuccesful due to the court's reliance upon a particular statute of the State of Kansas. The statute was later held unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in unrelated litigation. Application for relief from the original judgment followed, but was denied. The court held that a ^change in the law or in the judicial view of an established rule of law is not such an extraordinary circumstance" as to justify relief from a final judgment where the time to appeal has expired. This is unquestionably the general rule and rests principally upon the important policy that litigation must have an end. Miller v. McCutcheon, 117 N. J. Eq. 123, 130 (E. & A. 1934); Doyle v. Chase Manhattan Bank, 80 N. J. Super. 105, 121-22 (App. Div. 1963). Cf. In re Estate of Cory, 98 N. J. Super. 208, 216 (Ch. Div. 1967).
The present ease cannot be brought either within the rule followed in E & K Agency or within the somewhat more expansive doctrine of Pierce. The appellant Yuhas was not a party to the Phillips case nor did his cause of action have any factual relationship to that of the plaintiff in that suit. The only connection is the wholly fortuitous one that the appeals were argued together in the Appellate Division. This circumstance affords no rational basis upon which to rest a decision granting the extraordinary relief here sought. For all this Court knows there may be any number of other recent unappealed decisions in favor of insurers resting upon the no-recovery rule which was applied against this appellant in the court below. All would presumably be entitled to relief if appellant is so entitled. There would be no discernible basis for drawing any line in time between those to be barred and those to be relieved.
We find no basis on these facts to grant relief from a judgment under B. 4:50-1. The judgment of the Appellate Division is affirmed.
At the time of the accident, $10,000 was the statutory minimum amount of coverage on account of injury or death of one person in any one accident. This was later increased to $15,000. L. 1972, c. 204, § 1, effective January 1, 1973.
R. 4:50-1(f) is identical.