Opinion ID: 2613225
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Is the physical contact requirement void as against public policy?

Text: The policies at issue in this case do provide coverage for some unidentified accident-causing drivers: those that actually hit or have physical contact with the insured or the vehicle occupied by the insured. Having concluded that § 20-259.01 requires coverage of damages caused by unidentified motorists, the question becomes whether the contact limitation violates the statute. We conclude that it does. Exceptions to coverage are not generally permitted unless expressly allowed by statute. Rashid v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 163 Ariz. 270, 275, 787 P.2d 1066, 1071 (1990). The physical contact requirement, by arbitrarily excluding a class of people from coverage, directly conflicts with what we have determined to be the public policy of protecting people who are injured by financially irresponsible motorists. The physical contact requirement flows from the language of the policy  not the language of our statute, and is wholly unrelated to the question of being uninsured in fact. Our knowledge of the insured status of a hit and run driver is no better than our knowledge of the insured status of a miss and run driver. In either case, the unknown motorist is uninsured as to the injured party  there is no coverage available. The whole purpose of uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage is to allow a prudent person to protect himself or herself against the universe of risks. To exclude miss and run drivers from the definition frustrates the purpose of the statute. Commentators agree that the physical contact requirement was created by insurance companies to prevent fraudulent claims by insureds who negligently damage their vehicles and invent a phantom vehicle in an attempt to recover from their insurer. The contact requirement, however, is both too broad and too narrow to accomplish this goal. See DeMello v. First Ins. Co. of Hawaii, 55 Haw. 519, 523 P.2d 304, 310 (1974). As one commentator noted, if twenty witnesses will swear that an accident occurred as claimed by the injured insured, it is simply arbitrary to deny coverage in the absence of physical contact under the rubric of fraud prevention. Brown v. Progressive Mut. Ins. Co., 249 So.2d 429, 430 (Fla. 1971). Conversely, if there are no witnesses to an insured's own negligence, he or she can easily claim physical contact when there was none, and create the evidence to corroborate such a claim. See Anderson v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 133 Ariz. 464, 470, 652 P.2d 537, 543 (1982) (Feldman, J., concurring). We therefore conclude that the physical contact requirement of the policies is not an authorized exception to the coverage required by the statute. It is therefore void as against public policy.