Court Opinion

ID: 9593969
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:26:02.005496+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:22.474301
License: Public Domain

BISTLINE, Justice,
dissenting.
The doctrine of stare decisis is an important one in the field of jurisprudence: it provides our society with a certain degree of stability. For example, it enables citizens to ascertain what conduct is — and is not — permissible. As a result, no competent jurist takes lightly the task of overruling settled precedent. Nevertheless, experience often correctly teaches that prior decisions were wrongly decided in the first place. See, e.g., Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S.Ct. 686, 98 L.Ed. 873 (1954) (overruling “separate but equal” doctrine enunciated in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 16 S.Ct. 1138, 41 L.Ed. 256 (1896)). Otherwise put, stare decisis should not command a blind allegiance to obvious error.
In the present case, the majority blindly applies as “settled” precedent, Hammon v. Farmers Insurance, 109 Idaho 286, 707 P.2d 397 (1985), to affirm summary judgment in favor of the insurance company. Hammon, a three-year-old youngster was wrongly decided, and there is little in it which is commanding of any reverence. As Professor Alan Widiss states in his treatise:
[I]n many states the uninsured motorist statutes do not specifically require — or even mention — coverage for hit-and-run accidents. In these states, insurance companies have often argued that when an insurance policy provides coverage for hit-and-run accidents, the coverage is broader than that required by the statutes and that, therefore, insurance companies should be free to define the coverage term for the hit-and-run insurance. Several courts have accepted this theory. However, during the past five years, courts in an increasing number of states have concluded (1) that even though there is no specific reference to accidents caused by unknown motorists in the uninsured motorist statute, the statutory mandate contemplates coverage for such accidents, and (2) that provisions in insurance policies restricting coverage to accidents that are caused by unknown motorists to only those instances when a *240“physical contact” occurred, are in derogation of the purposes of the statute.
1 A. Widiss, Uninsured and Underinsured Motorist Insurance § 9.8, p. 348 (1985) (emphasis added) (footnotes omitted) (quoted in Hammon, 109 Idaho at 290, 707 P.2d at 711 (Bistline, J., dissenting)).
The majority holding continues to vitiate the legislative purpose in enacting Idaho’s uninsured motorist statute, I.C. § 41-2502. A growing number of enlightened courts, as Professor Widiss notes, have held that the purposes of the statute are undermined when a “physical contact” is required. Otherwise, “the victims of hit-and-run drivers who were skillful and careful enough to avoid contact, but unfortunate enough to have a physical contact clause in their policies, ironically would be left without coverage.” Hammon, at 291, 707 P.2d at 712. (Bistline, J., dissenting).
In sum, stare decisis has been abused. The ghost of Hammon continues to haunt the victims of hit and run drivers. “Indeed, insurance companies may presently believe themselves in ‘good hands’ under the auspices of the Idaho Supreme Court, a 'good neighbor’ if ever there was one.” 109 Idaho at 292, 707 P.2d at 713 (Bistline, J., dissenting).
HUNTLEY, J., concurs.