Court Opinion

ID: 6885563
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-23 21:27:33.093905+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:05:42.365061
License: Public Domain

WOODROUGH, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) .
Only the construction of an insurance policy is involved in this case, but the form construed appears to be the standard form used to provide the public in Missouri with the insurance protection required by the state statute against negligent operations of truckers to whom certificates of public convenience and necessity have been issued. The construction of the policy adopted by the majority limits the insurance company to such a narrow obligation that no recourse against it is left to the public in Missouri for injuries resulting from some of the most common, continuing and omnipresent dangers universally incident to the operations of such truckers. Certainly driving a truck that is empty of merchandise back to its garage at the close of day (which is the instant case) presents a hazard to the public of exactly that character and the declaratory judgment is that there is no insurance. The rational of the decision is that the insurance company has no liability to the public unless at the time of an injury the trucker’s motor vehicle involved is moving in the carriage of freight on fixed schedule. The conclusion is not predicated upon any Missouri decision but purports to follow federal decisions and decisions in states other than Missouri. As I can not agree, the importance of the public interest necessitates a brief expression of dissent.
The applicable Missouri statute (Sec. 5729) provides that no certificate of public convenience and necessity shall be issued to any common carrier by motor vehicle in the state until liability insurance is furnished to compensate members of the public for injuries resulting from the negligent operations of the person to whom the certificate is issued, and the policy in suit was applied for and the insurance company issued it to meet the statutory requirement. We have no adequate picture of how the business of common carriers of freight by automotive vehicles is ordinarily carried on in Missouri, or what ordinarily constitutes their operations, but it sufficiently appears that such carriers do not confine the use of all their trucks all of the time to scheduled hauls. The fact that the trucks are useful and used for some other services is a main factor in the competition of the industry with the railroads whose vehicles are confined to their tracks, and doubtless any such restriction of truck uses would be gross economic waste. Under Missouri law, therefore, the carrier’s certificate is issued to the truckers without limiting them either as to the number of their trucks or the *300manner of using them in the business. Their certificates permit them to own, borrow or lease and, make any proper use of trucks. The hauling of freight on certain routes designated for them by the state commission is regulated by requiring fixed tariffs to be posted and followed.
The insurance companies have developed their automobile policies into standard forms and upon the enactment of the above statute the companies and the Missouri Commission were confronted with some difficulty in selecting appropriate wording for an endorsement or rider to be incorporated in the standard forms to provide the insurance required by the Missouri law and at the same time effect reconciliation as complete as possible with the standard form provisions. The provisions of 'standard forms of automobile insurance (evolved in great prolixity through insurance experience) insure particularly described automobiles, whereas the Missouri law as stated requires an insurance to compensate members of the public injured by negligent operations of persons to whom certificates are issued without regard to the number or description of their vehicles.
To meet the difficulties of composition the rider was started out with the clear cut agreement of the insurance company that it waived a description of the motor vehicles insured. But practically all the standard form provisions were in terms predicated on and related to particularly described automobiles and especially the fundamental matter of premiums was so related. The insurance contract as a whole would not make sense without the use of some clause in the rider to supply a general identification of 'trucks. As to the operations of the trucks, the insurance company was doubtless fully informed of the truck carrier business in Missouri and its risks and the standard form made ample and fair provision concerning operations, included and excluded. The lack in the contract after waiver, of specific description of trucks was of some kind of description of trucks to be covered. To meet the law such description had to be co-extensive with the right of the trucker receiving a certificate to operate any trucks he could use to advantage. Accordingly, compliance with the law and restoration of coherence in the insurance contract was effected by concluding the rider with the insurance company’s agreement to pay any final judgment for injuries to all persons “caused by any and all motor vehicles operated by the assured pursuant to the certificate of convenience and necessity issued by the Public Service Commission of Missouri within the limits etc.”
It seems clear to me in view of the situation that the reference in the rider to the certificate of necessity and convenience was intended solely as a means of generally describing trucks to be covered, supplying the hiatus in the contract caused by the waiver of specific description of trucks with which the rider began.
Such construction assumes an honest intention of all the parties to comply with the Missouri law and to insure the" public against the hazards to which it became subjected by the operations of the truckers to whom the certificate was issued. When such truckers carried on their business in the ordinary way and complied with the regulations prescribed for them by the Commission, their operations were within the contemplation of their certificate and pursuant thereto in a fair and reasonable seiise. In order to construe the clause as a limitation of the operations to be insured against it seems to me there would have to be an unjustifiable interpolation to make it read “while being operated.”
Whether the insurance companies ought to be chargeable for the injuries to riders picked up by the truckers’ drivers is beside the question. Drivers are human and the fellowmen they pick up are included by the words “any person” in the Missouri statute. I do not find, either in the rider or in the policy as a whole, sufficient justification for declaratory judgment by the federal court which leaves the public in Missouri without insurance protection against the ordinary hazards of carriers’ operations. The legislative intent appears to me to be directly to the contrary. The decision of the trial court appears to me well reasoned and sound, and I would affirm it.