Opinion ID: 1172760
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: timeliness of the insured's estoppel theory as an issue on appeal

Text: The insurer contends that the insured's theory of estoppel or waiver was not raised below nor were the facts relied on in the appellate opinion a part of the evidentiary material before the trial court when summary judgment was rendered. In response, the insured asserts that the appellate court did not consider extraneous materials and, furthermore, that the Court of Appeals relied on the Porter doctrine in reaching its conclusion. After summary judgment is granted, the objecting party cannot on appeal rely on any fact or evidentiary material that was not before the trial court at the time of its rendition. [2] The ruling on a motion for summary judgment must be rested on the record which is then before the court rather than on one that could have been assembled. [3] Similarly, the reviewing court is always limited to the issues actually presented below, as reflected by the record. [4] The insured presented below no defense to the insurer's quest for summary judgment. No reply was filed in which estoppel was plead. Nor did the insured submit below any evidentiary material  such as the later-proferred letter-exhibits  which could have qualified for incorporation into the appellate record. The insured cannot supplement the record on appeal by injecting into it material that was not before the trial court at the judgment stage. [5] Neither may an appellate pronouncement serve as a means of supplying a deficiency in the record tendered for review. [6] In short, there can be no post-decisional amendment of the record to include material that was not timely admitted or properly pressed for incorporation at the trial level. [7] Because estoppel clearly was not raised here as an issue below and hence is not now available as a viable theory on certiorari, we must once again leave unsettled [8] the question whether an insurer's prior denial of the insured's uninsured motorist coverage claim may operate to estop that insurer from later invoking the Porter doctrine's protection against destruction of its subrogation rights. We save for another day the task of solving that problem.