Court Opinion

ID: 9578257
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:43:26.443975+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:25:25.025291
License: Public Domain

Fairchild, J.
(concurring). I concur in the result and in most of what is stated for the court by Mr. Justice Currie. I would prefer that the court had not dealt with the question of the SR-21 until the question was necessarily before us and more fully briefed and argued.
The court is now apparently deciding that material failure of the insured to co-operate with the insurer first occurring or first discoverable with due diligence after the filing of an SR-21 deprives the injured plaintiff of recovery against the insurer for the insured’s negligence. Very properly, such failure should deprive the insured of protection and may give rise to a cause of action in favor of the insurer and against the insured if the insurer is nevertheless required to pay, but it is not so obvious to me that it should defeat the injured plaintiff. Under the Safety Responsibility Law, sec. 85.09 (5) to (16) (c), Stats. 1953, the license of the operator and the registrations of the owner were to be suspended unless security sufficient to satisfy a judgment were deposited. This requirement was made inapplicable however if the owner “had in effect at the time of such accident an automobile liability policy with respect to the motor vehicle involved in such accident.”
The following questions seem to me to call for more thorough consideration: (1) Does the statute contemplate that a policy, which was “in effect at the time of such acci*554dent,” can be made ineffective as to the accident by the insured’s breach of conditions after the accident? (2) If the statute exempts an operator or owner from depositing security where a policy is in effect at the time of the accident, but is so construed as to permit the policy to become ineffective by breach of conditions as to co-operation, would the exemption (so construed) be unconstitutional?
As said in Behringer v. State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co. (1957), 275 Wis. 586, 592, 82 N. W. (2d) 915, “Keeping in mind the objective of the law, if a policy of existing automobile liability insurance is to be relied upon as the source of compensating the person' who has sustained damage or injury, surely the legislature intended this to be as effective for such purpose as the alternative method of depositing security with the commissioner.” The court went on to point out that the legislature had left a loophole in accomplishing the result. Where the loophole can reasonably and properly be minimized or eliminated by construing the statute in the light of its purpose, that ought to be done.