Opinion ID: 1957318
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Holding and Effect of Mascarella

Text: ¶ 17. Throughout much of the jurisprudential history of the Mississippi Motor Vehicle Safety Responsibility Law, we have allowed Class II insureds to stack the following uninsured motorist policies: (1) policies which Class II insureds purchased for their own vehicles, and (2) the policy covering the accident vehicle and any other vehicles covered under the same policy. See Glennon, 812 So.2d at 930-31. That is, along with stacking of the Class II insured's own policies, we have allowed intrapolicy stacking of the host vehicle's uninsured motorist benefits. Id. at 932-33 (noting that in all of our previous cases in which we allowed Class II insureds to stack, the uninsured coverages being stacked were all contained in one policy.). [5] In addressing the right of a Class II insured to recover uninsured motorist benefits for which his employer (the named insured) contracted, Mascarella dramatically departed from our previous decisions. ¶ 18. In Mascarella, a driver injured a man, Mascarella, who was in the course of his employment with a company, Development Concepts, and driving one of their eight vehicles. Mascarella, 833 So.2d at 576. The negligent tortfeasor, Sutherland, had liability limits of $100,000.00 on his auto insurance policy. Id. Mascarella had no uninsured motorist coverage. Id. The company vehicle which Mascarella drove had uninsured motorists policy limits of $25,000.00 and was covered under the same insurance policy as the company's seven other vehicles. Id. Therefore, as a Class II insured and in accord with our precedent up to that point, Mascarella argued he was entitled to stack the $25,000.00 of uninsured motorist coverage on each of his company's eight vehicles for a total of $200,000.00 uninsured motorist coverage. Id. This coverage, when compared to the $100,000.00 underlying liability coverage on the Sutherland automobile, [would have] result[ed] in the Sutherland vehicle being underinsured to the extent of $100,000.00. Id. ¶ 19. We stated it was clear from our case law that we do indeed allow a [Class II] insured to stack his own [uninsured motorist] coverage with that of the vehicle in which he was riding. Id. at 579. However, in a departure from our previous cases, we went on to hold that Mascarella only had the right to stack the uninsured motorist coverage of the accident vehicle with his own vehicle(s)' coverage (i.e. we held Mascarella could not, as a Class II insured, engage in intrapolicy stacking). Id. at 580. Therefore, because Mascarella had no uninsured motorist coverage on his own vehicle, he was left with the accident vehicle's $25,000.00 of coverage, an insufficient amount to deem Sutherland underinsured. Id. ¶ 20. Mascarella did not definitively overrule the cases contrary to its holding. [6] We therefore explicitly state what we implied with our holding in Mascarella. To the extent our previous decisions held Class II insureds were entitled to uninsured motorist benefits beyond those for which a named insured contracted, they are overruled. See, e.g., Glennon, 812 So.2d at 931-33; McDaniel v. Shacklee United States, Inc., 807 So.2d 393, 395-99 (Miss.2001); State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Davis, 613 So.2d 1179, 1182 (Miss. 1992); Thiac v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 569 So.2d 1217, 1220-21 (Miss. 1990); Harris v. Magee, 573 So.2d 646, 654-55 (Miss.1990); Cossitt v. Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co., 551 So.2d 879, 883-84 (Miss. 1989); Wickline v. United States Fid. & Guar. Co., 530 So.2d 708, 714-15 (Miss. 1988); Brown v. Md. Cas. Co., 521 So.2d 854, 855-56 (Miss.1987); see also Box v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 692 So.2d 54, 58 (Miss.1997) (declining to overrule Davis ); Miss. Farm Bureau Cas. Ins. Co. v. Curtis, 678 So.2d 983, 988-89 (Miss. 1996) (citing Davis with approval); Meadows v. Miss. Farm Bureau Ins. Co., 634 So.2d 108, 110-11 (Miss.1994) (citing Davis with approval); but see McDaniel, 807 So.2d at 399-401 (Smith, J., dissenting) (noting the absurd result of affording $17,580,000.00-worth of uninsured motorist coverage for a Class II employee when the employer only paid a $78.50 premium for the coverage). [7]