Opinion ID: 2518592
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Dejbod, Vassiliu, and Mulholland

Text: The ICA erroneously relied on foreign authority that is dissonant with the Taylor line. The Washington Court of Appeals's holding, in Dejbod, that [t]he fact that a liability carrier voluntarily settles . . . does not, without more, establish . . . that [its] insured's [BI] policy is `applicable' to the claimant, 818 P.2d at 612, is simply incompatible with Taylor and Granger, in which we contemplated the offset of settling defendants' entire BI limits despite the lack of any adjudication of fault. Cf. supra sections I.A and III.C.4.a. In Vassiliu, the widow of the decedent UIM insured had sued (1) the driver of the other motor vehicle in the subject accident and (2) DaimlerChrysler, which was the manufacturer and seller of her husband's car. 813 A.2d at 549. The parties agreed that the plaintiff's burden against DaimlerChrysler revealed itself to be insurmountable, and DaimlerChrysler settled for $215,000.00 without concession of liability on its part. Id. at 550. The plaintiff sought a declaratory judgment against the decedent's UIM insurers for the full extent of the governing UIM policies. See id. at 550-51. The defendant insurers argued that they were not obliged to cover any of the decedent's injuries inasmuch as the $215,000.00 payment from DaimlerChrysler exceeded the total UIM limits of $200,000.00. Id. at 551. The New Jersey Superior Court's Law Division disagreed, and the Appellate Division affirmed. Id. at 551, 552-53, 556. Construing a New Jersey statute similar to HRS § 431:10C-103's definition of an underinsured motor vehicle, see supra note 1, [20] the Appellate Division reasoned, in the portion of its opinion quoted by the ICA, slip op. at 23, that []when the statute . . . speaks of `available' insurance coverage, it plainly refers to that of persons who are actual responsible tortfeasors and not that of those who may have been `involved' in the accident without being liable under the law. To rule otherwise would lead to the result that [UIM] coverage would be eliminated whenever entirely blameless persons involved in an accident happen to be heavily insured. [] 813 A.2d at 553 (emphasis added) (quoting Gold v. Aetna Life & Cas. Ins. Co., 233 N.J.Super. 271, 558 A.2d 854, 857 (1989)). The ICA overlooked a critical distinction from the present matter. After the settlement in Vassiliu, the remaining driver and the plaintiff proceeded to a bench trial. Id. at 550 & n. 2. The judge adjudicated liability with respect to the driver, allocating 100% of the fault to her; [h]e found no evidence of fault on the part of [DaimlerChrysler]. See id. at 550. Finally, Zane completely misapprehends Mulholland. That case concerned a UIM insurer's exhaustion clause, which provided that `there is no coverage until the limits of liability of all [BI] . . . insurance policies . . . that apply . . . have been used up by payment of judgments or settlements.' 122 Ill.Dec. 657, 527 N.E.2d at 35 (emphases omitted). An Illinois trial court had construed the term apply narrowly, i.e., such that an insured need not exhaust the coverage of tortfeasors against which `a reasonably viable cause of action' did not exist. Id. at 35-37. The Illinois Appellate Court disavowed, at least in dictum, the lower court's analysis to which Zane alluded in the June 4, 2003 hearing. The appellate court balked at the practical difficulty of pretry[ing] the case and rul[ing] on the . . . reasonabl[e] viab[ility] of a claim, but affirmed on unrelated grounds, to wit, that the exhaustion clause . . . is against public policy and therefore unenforceable, accord Taylor, 90 Hawai`i at 312, 313 & n. 10, 978 P.2d at 750, 751 & n. 10. See 527 N.E.2d at 37, 40-41.