Opinion ID: 4511044
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Insurance-Coverage Dispute

Text: On the day of the accident, RW Trucking had in force a commercialautomobile policy from Carolina, and a commercial-general-liability policy from Burlington. In January 2017, after the settlement, Carolina sued Burlington in the District of Wyoming for a declaratory judgment that Burlington—not Carolina—had owed RW Trucking and Metz a duty to defend and a duty to indemnify. Carolina also sought reimbursement of the $375,000 it had paid to settle Garza’s claims. Burlington counterclaimed, taking the opposite view that Carolina in fact owed a duty to defend and a duty to indemnify; that by breaching its duty to defend, Carolina owed Burlington reimbursement for all costs of defense; and that Carolina was responsible to reimburse Burlington the $415,000 Burlington had paid to settle Garza’s claims. Both Carolina and Burlington filed motions for summary judgment. Proceeding under diversity jurisdiction, the Wyoming federal district court applied 7 Wyoming’s choice-of-law rules (as the forum state). That led the district court to apply the Restatement (Second) Conflict of Laws (“Second Restatement”) in determining whether Wyoming or New Mexico had the most significant contacts to the insurance contracts. Under the Restatement, the court applied Wyoming’s substantive law, not New Mexico’s, in interpreting the two insurance policies. The district court concluded that Wyoming law instructed it to resolve the policycoverage dispute by comparing the allegations from Garza’s complaints with the language from the two insurers’ policies. After doing so, the court ruled that Carolina had no duty to defend, so no duty to indemnify either. But the court ruled that Burlington did owe a duty to indemnify (and so implicitly, also a duty to defend), based on its policy’s terms. Even so, the court declined to order Burlington to reimburse Carolina for its share of Garza’s settlement, ruling that Carolina had paid as a volunteer. Dissatisfied, Carolina and Burlington filed motions to alter or amend the judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e). In response, the district court declined to reconsider its ruling that Carolina had paid as a volunteer. It also declined to reconsider its decision that Wyoming law governed the duty-to-defend issue. But the court did reconsider and reverse its ruling that Carolina owed no duty to defend. This time the court ruled that Carolina did in fact have a duty to defend, which it had breached. Even so, the district court ruled that Carolina had no duty to indemnify, based on a policy exclusion. 8 Carolina timely filed a notice of appeal challenging portions of the original judgment and the amended judgment. A few days later, Burlington filed in the district court a motion to correct or amend the amended judgment under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(a), seeking reimbursement for Carolina’s share of the defense costs. Burlington also timely cross-appealed the original judgment and the amended judgment. We abated proceedings in our court pending the district court’s resolution of Burlington’s Rule 60(a) motion. As described in its resulting order, the district court “correct[ed]” its amended judgment to award Burlington Carolina’s share of the defense costs, $66,670.76, which resulted in a second amended judgment. App. at 1571–72. Neither party filed a notice of appeal from this second amended judgment or amended their prior notices of appeal to include this judgment.