Court Opinion

ID: 9751094
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 16:04:37.302349+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:13:48.786521
License: Public Domain

*564CLIFFORD, J.,
dissenting.
The Court concludes that the uninsured motorist statute, N.J.S.A. 17:28-1.1, and the provisions of the Allstate insurance policy in question compel intra-policy “stacking” or “pyramiding” of uninsured motorist (UM) coverage. What this means is that those who fall within the definition of an “insured” under a single automobile liability policy covering several vehicles— three, in each of these cases — can recover under the UM coverage of each car and thereby multiply the limits of liability for the UM coverage by the number of automobiles designated in the policy.
Here is where that result takes us:
Let us take, as a starting point, a fleet, or several vehicles, policy issued to a single insured. If we desire to carry this to a point of absurdity, let us say that the policyholder is a city, owning a thousand automobiles, with an uninsured motorist coverage of $50,000. If we said that the risk, in any one collision, then would be the cumulative total, or stacked coverage, in any one incident the company’s exposure would be 50 million dollars as to each vehicle — an absurdity, which no company could possibly afford to insure. [Appelman, 8C Insurance Law and Practice, § 5101 at 44 (footnote omitted).] 1
Because any reading of the statute and the insurance policy that yields such a result does not make much sense to me, I view it with a suspicion that has ripened into full-blown disagreement with the Court, wherefore I dissent.
I
It is my view that Allstate Ins. Co. v. McHugh, 124 N.J.Super. 105 (Ch.Div.1973), aff’d, 126 N.J.Super. 458 (App.Div.), certif. den., 65 N.J. 288 (1974), is correct in its holding, on the same issue as is presented by this case, that intra-policy stacking is not required by statute and is not permitted under Allstate’s policy. In McHugh, Judge Bischoff ruled in his Chancery Divi*565sion opinion, relied on by the Appellate Division, that the limits of liability under the UM coverage of McHugh’s automobile insurance policy were unambiguous and that the separate premium payments for each automobile represented consideration for the additional risk incurred in the coverage of two cars. In Motor Club of America Ins. Co. v. Phillips, 66 N.J. 277 (1974), upon which the majority places heavy reliance, the Court, far from rejecting McHugh’s logic, took pains to point out that the issue in McHugh did “not concern us here”, and we implied “no view on the results there adjudicated.” 66 N.J. at 282-83.
Today’s meticulous opinion points out that previous decisions of this Court on the stacking of UM coverage have held the challenged provisions of the insurance policies in those cases to be violative of the requirement of the uninsured motorist statute that every automobile liability policy contain UM coverage up to a designated minimum. The provisions examined in those cases sought to exclude coverage when other insurance was available. Motor Club of America Ins. Co. v. Phillips, 66 N.J. 277 (1974), concerned an “excess-escape” clause in Phillips’ policy that excluded UM coverage if recovery was available from the host car’s policy. Beek v. Ohio Cas. Ins. Co., 73 N.J. 185 (1977), dealt with inter-policy stacking of the UM coverage in two separate policies of insurance owned by plaintiff. Ciec000000Transamerica Ins. Group., 81 N.J. 421 (1979), probed the relationship between the UM and bodily injury liability coverages contained in one policy. In each instance the Court held that provisions within those insurance policies that undertook to exclude UM coverage because plaintiffs had access to other insurance were repugnant to the statutory requirement that every automobile insurance policy have UM coverage in prescribed amounts. I voted with the unanimous Court in each of the cases cited above, and continue to view them — as apparently does the rest of the Court — as having been correctly decided.
But Motor Club, Beek, and Ciecka were directed toward a different statutory concern — the mandate that every policy provide UM coverage within stated minimum limits. There is *566simply no question that the policy before us satisfies that requirement. However, whether the statute be read “literally,” a la Motor Club, 66 N.J. at 292, or imaginatively, indulgently, even poetically, one cannot find within its four corners or its penumbra any suggestion that a single policy fixing a single limit of liability for UM coverage must be read to require multiplication of the amount of that coverage by the number of vehicles included on that single policy. The cases before us do not raise any issue of “exclusion” or “excess-escape” outlawed by the statute. As I understand today’s issue it boils down to a question of contract interpretation, not statutory interpretation: do the policies in these two cases provide only for the statutory minimum UM coverage or for some multiple thereof?
II
The Allstate policy, which remarkably is the only one before us, could scarcely be more precise in its anti-stacking provision. The policy’s declarations sheet limits liability under the UM coverage to $15,000 for each person. Part IV of the policy nails this down in its specification that the “limits of liability for Uninsured Motorists Coverage stated in the declarations as applicable to ‘each person’ is the limit of the company’s liability for all damages * * * because of bodily injury sustained by one person as the result of any one accident * * What can that mean except that $15,000 is the total amount available to one person for recovery under UM coverage?
But, says the Court, this is all rendered ambiguous when one goes to the “Conditions” section of the policy, which contains a provision under “Two or More Automobiles.” It is there stated that “stacking” will not be permitted for the types of coverage specified in that provision. See ante at 559. Inasmuch as UM coverage is not included in the list of coverages for which “stacking” is not allowed, the majority reads this to mean that the converse must be true for Section IV — that “stacking” is permitted under UM coverage.
*567That contention is off the mark. Section IV, as I have sought to demonstrate, addresses the “stacking” problem in an unmistakable, straightforward fashion. It is not permitted under UM coverage. Because of the unique nature of UM coverage, the limit of liability declared in Section IV is not rendered a nullity or transformed into an ambiguity under the “Conditions” section. UM coverage applies to “each accident,” as the Court has taken pains to emphasize, see ante at 554-555, rather than to “each automobile.” Therefore, the “stacking” provision prefaced by the heading “Two or More Automobiles” simply has nothing to do with UM coverage. It is entirely irrelevant. The ambiguity that the majority resolves against the insurer does not exist.
In Isom I would affirm. In Lundy I would reverse and remand only because the policy is not in evidence and for all we know it may be its terms permit “stacking” of UM coverage. If Aetna’s policy reads the same as Allstate’s, then of course the same result should follow.
Justice POLLOCK authorizes me to record his concurrence in this dissenting opinion.
For reversal and remandment — Chief Justice WILENTZ and Justices SCHREIBER, HANDLER and O’HERN — 4.
Dissenting — Justices CLIFFORD and POLLOCK — 2.

A “far-fetched” example, says the majority, ante at 556 n. 2. Of course it is. That is why Appelman characterizes it as an “absurdity.” And that is precisely what is produced by the Court’s reading of the statute and policy in question.