Court Opinion

ID: 9595790
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:43:19.850473+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:31.164917
License: Public Domain

WOLLMAN, Justice
(dissenting).
I would affirm.
When the legislature desires that there shall be no reduction in an insured’s total recovery, it expresses that intention quite clearly, as Justices Doyle and Winans point out in their discussion of SDCL 58-23-8(2) and (3) in Schuldt v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Ins. Co., 89 S.D. 687, 238 N.W.2d 270, decided this day.
There being no statutory prohibition against subrogation in SDCL 58-23-8(1), we must look elsewhere. I do not find the answer in the distinction, however valid it may be for other *679purposes, between the concept of indemnity and that of life insurance. As I read the statutes, the intention of the legislature in enacting SDCL 58-23-7 and 58-23-8' was to guarantee that every named insured in an automobile liability policy should be afforded the minimum coverages therein set forth if he desires to avail himself of such coverages. If he does not reject such coverages, he or his beneficiary will be assured of recovering at least the amounts specified in SDCL 58-23-8 if events render him or his beneficiary eligible to recover under such coverages. Once payment has been made within the limits set forth in SDCL 58-23-8(1) and (3), the legislative objective has been accomplished. So long as the insured or his beneficiary retains the amount he would have been entitled to had there been no recovery from a third party, an insurer does no violence to legislative intent by recouping some or all of the payments made pursuant to accidental death benefits and medical payments provisions- of the policy.