Court Opinion

ID: 9792005
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:21:56.176538+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:40.065816
License: Public Domain

ORME, Judge
(concurring specially):
I join in the court’s decision to affirm the judgment in favor of the insurer.
Appellant concedes that the language of the policy unambiguously denies uninsured motorist liability coverage, under the peculiar facts of this case, in any amount greater than $20,000. Appellant nonetheless asks this court to embrace the “reasonable expectations” doctrine, hold as a matter of law that Wagner’s reasonable expectation was that he would be covered up to $100,-000 in the instant situation, and decree that this expectation must control over the unambiguous policy language to the contrary.
While I do not subscribe to the court’s opinion in its entirety, I concur fully in its ultimate holding, namely that it is unnecessary in this appeal to definitively accept or to definitively reject the “reasonable expectations” doctrine. This is so because even if the doctrine were to be adopted in this state, appellant would not be entitled, given the state of the record before us, to the judgment she seeks. As explained in the main opinion, there is no evidence Wagner expected, reasonably or otherwise, $100,-000.00 in uninsured motorist liability protection if he were injured or killed as a passenger in his own car while it was being operated by an uninsured friend. Moreover, the insurance agent's best guess of how he would have explained to Wagner the extent of the uninsured motorist coverage he was obtaining would not have promoted such an expectation.
With no hard evidence but the policy before us, we are basically asked to superimpose on these facts our own commonsense notion of what someone in Wagner’s position would reasonably have expected when contracting for the uninsured motorist coverage he obtained. This we have declined to do. But I must say that if we thought it appropriate to do otherwise, at least my common-sense view would not help appellant. My sense is that the average consumer in Wagner’s situation would be contemplating a collision between his heavily-insured Porsche and some junk-heap operated by an irresponsible, insolvent, and uninsured stranger. Thoughts of needing additional protection while riding as a passenger in one’s own Porsche, having turned the keys over to a friend without insurance, strike me as being quite unlikely indeed.