Opinion ID: 2769803
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Scope of the Clark County Ordinance

Text: Westchester argues the compulsory insurance doctrine cannot apply because PALS was under no obligation to carry hangarkeepers liability insurance. Westchester reasons the ordinance excepts PALS from its insurance requirements because PALS, by virtue of the insurance obligations in its operator’s permit, was “otherwise providing insurance as hereinafter set forth pursuant to an existing agreement with Clark County.” Clark County Code § 20.10.020. Westchester reads this phrase to mean the ordinance’s “insurance provisions apply unless insurance requirements are otherwise provided for under an agreement with the County.” This reading—simply requiring an agreement containing any insurance requirements—ignores the ordinance language excepting an operator only if its agreement with Clark County requires the operator to provide the insurance “as . . . set forth” in the ordinance’s listed insurance obligations. Id. (emphasis added). Giving effect to this phrase, the district court read the ordinance as exempting operators “from its requirements with respect to a particular type of insurance only to the extent that those operators are subject to county agreements that require them to obtain that type of insurance.” We need not say whether the district court’s reading is best because the prefatory language makes clear to us that the ordinance’s requirement as to a particular type of insurance applies where an agreement is silent as to that type of insurance. Here, PALS’s permit did not refer to hangarkeepers -6- liability insurance, so under any reasonable reading, PALS was not excused from the ordinance’s hangarkeepers requirement.