Opinion ID: 1060165
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Skates and Goode Incident

Text: In August 1991, appellant Brian M. Skates was operating a motor vehicle in Prince Edward County. Appellant Arnita M. Goode was among the passengers in the vehicle, which was owned by her mother. The group had been to a night club in Farmville where one Darrell Lee had been involved in an altercation with Skates. Later, Lee was riding in an uninsured motor vehicle driven by another person pursuing the Goode vehicle. As the vehicles were abreast, Lee leaned from an open window and shot both Skates and Goode, injuring them. At the time, the Goode vehicle was insured by an automobile liability policy containing uninsured motorist coverage issued in Virginia by appellee Colonial Insurance Company of California. As pertinent to the issue to be decided in these appeals, the policy obligated the insurer to pay Skates and Goode all sums they were legally entitled to recover as damages from the owner or operator of an uninsured motor vehicle arising out of the ownership, maintenance or use of such uninsured motor vehicle. Subsequently, the insurer denied uninsured motorist claims submitted by Skates and Goode. They sought payment for their injuries based upon the conduct of the operator of the vehicle in which the assailant was riding. Later, the insurer filed the present action against Skates and Goode seeking a declaratory judgment that the claimants are not entitled to coverage under the policy. The trial court granted the insurer's pre-trial motion for summary judgment, declaring inter alia that the injuries did not arise out of the use of the uninsured motor vehicle. We awarded Skates and Goode separate appeals from the March 1995 judgment order. First, we shall address the Lexie-Liberty Mutual appeal. Generally, the nature, validity, and interpretation of automobile insurance policies, like other contracts, are governed by the law of the place where made. Woodson v. Celina Mut. Ins. Co., 211 Va. 423, 426, 177 S.E.2d 610, 613 (1970); Lackey v. Virginia Sur. Co., 209 Va. 713, 715, 167 S.E.2d 131, 133 (1969). The Liberty Mutual policy was made in North Carolina, issued and delivered there to Mrs. Lexie covering a vehicle principally garaged in North Carolina. Thus, the trial court properly applied North Carolina law, which we shall examine to determine whether the court correctly ruled that the firing of gunshots from one vehicle into another does not arise out of the ... use of the vehicle. The law of North Carolina is consistent with the law of Virginia on this subject. In North Carolina, coverage for injuries arising from the use of a motor vehicle requires a causal connection between the use of the vehicle and the injury. Scales v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 119 N.C.App. 787, 460 S.E.2d 201, 203 (1995). This connection is shown if the injury is the natural and reasonable consequence of the vehicle's use. Id. However, there is no coverage if the injury results from something wholly disassociated from, independent of, and remote from the vehicle's normal employment. Id. Clearly, an automobile chase with guns blazing is not a regular and normal use of a vehicle. Id. In sum, North Carolina law provides that injuries and death resulting from gunshots fired from a moving automobile do not constitute an accident arising from the use of such vehicle, Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. v. Knight, 34 N.C.App. 96, 237 S.E.2d 341, 344, disc. review denied, 293 N.C. 589, 239 S.E.2d 263 (1977), and the trial court in the present case correctly so ruled. Parenthetically, it should be noted that Lexie dwells on the effect upon the contract issues in this appeal of the default judgment he obtained against the operator of the assailant's vehicle in the federal tort action, to which Liberty Mutual was not a party. The findings of the federal court were not before the trial court when it ruled on the motion for summary judgment, and there was no motion filed by Lexie in the trial court based on the preclusive effect, if any, of the federal judgment. Thus, we will not entertain these questions for the first time on appeal. Rule 5:25. [] Next, we shall turn to the remaining three appeals, applying Virginia law. These cases are controlled by our recent decision in Travelers Insurance Co. v. LaClair, 250 Va. 368, 463 S.E.2d 461 (1995). There, the issue was precisely the same as in the present cases. In LaClair, a deputy sheriff was injured, while standing on a public highway, by gunshots intentionally fired by the operator of an uninsured motor vehicle, who had stopped in front of the officer's police car. The assailant, partially inside his car at the time, fired as the officer approached him. Reversing a trial court's judgment in favor of the officer, we analyzed our recent insurance coverage cases to address the question whether the injury arose from the use of the uninsured motor vehicle. We noted certain basic concepts that are uniformly applied to the question, including the rule that consideration must be given to the intention of the parties to the insurance contract in determining the scope of the coverage afforded. Id. at 371, 463 S.E.2d at 463. Importantly, we emphasized that there must be a causal relationship between the incident and the employment of the motor vehicle as a vehicle. Id. at 372, 463 S.E.2d at 463. In LaClair, we held that the employment of the assailant's vehicle did not amount to use of that vehicle within the meaning of the policy provisions at issue. We said that even though the assailant may have utilized the vehicle to lure the officer into stopping behind him, even though the assailant was partially inside the car when firing the shots, even though the assailant employed the car as a shield, even though the vehicle was employed to facilitate the act producing the injury, and even though the assailant's vehicle may have been an accessory to the shooting, none of those acts or circumstances involved the use of the assailant's vehicle as a vehicle. Thus, we concluded that the requisite causal relationship between the incident and employment of the automobile as a vehicle does not exist. Id. at 373, 463 S.E.2d at 464. See United States Fire Ins. Co. v. Parker, 250 Va. 374, 377-78, 463 S.E.2d 464, 466-67 (1995) (applying the same test in construing the ownership, maintenance, or use of a motor vehicle language of Code § 38.2-2206, the uninsured motorist statute). Finally, in LaClair, we observed that the natural and ordinary meaning of `use' of a private, passenger motor vehicle does not contemplate its utilization as a mobile or stationary pillbox or fortress, or as a shield, or as an outpost from which an assailant may inflict intentional injury with a firearm. LaClair, 250 Va. at 373, 463 S.E.2d at 464. The foregoing statements from LaClair apply with equal force to these appeals controlled by Virginia law. The several claimants seek to distinguish the present cases from LaClair upon the basis that in these cases the vehicles were moving at the time of the assaults and passengers in the uninsured vehicles, not the operators, were the assailants. These are distinctions without any difference, given the facts of these particular cases. The principal focus is upon the manner in which the vehicle, whether moving or stationary, is being employed, not upon the activity or role of any assailant who may be in, upon, or around the uninsured vehicle. Consequently, the respective trial courts correctly ruled that the intentional shootings by persons occupying the uninsured vehicles did not constitute use of the vehicles for purposes of uninsured motorist coverage, and the judgments below in favor of the respective insurers will be Affirmed.