Court Opinion

ID: 9737426
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 19:24:51.882088+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:23:58.844827
License: Public Domain

VANDE WALLE, Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in the portion of the majority opinion which concludes that Farmers Insurance Exchange is responsible to provide primary coverage. Insofar as it concludes that Transamerica’s coverage was primary and must share proportionately in coverage according to the limits of its policy, I dissent from that portion of the majority opinion which reverses the determination of the trial court that Transamerica’s coverage was excess.
The trial court did not consider the issue of whether or not the responsibility should be apportioned or shared concurrently. Furthermore, counsel for Farmers Insurance Exchange when questioned concerning this matter at oral argument, concluded that here, contrary to the finding of the majority opinion, the responsibility should be apportioned. The determination of the majority to not only reach, but decide, this issue suggests an intent to rewrite contracts of insurance to achieve what the majority perceives to be a desired result. Although the majority professes to agree that “[ajllocation of losses for the same casualty between separate policies of one insured is largely a contractual matter,” it adds the seemingly innocuous but highly subjective reservation, “equitably construed.” It is under this guise that the majority appears to rewrite contracts of insurance to achieve its perception of an “equitable result,” i.e., notwithstanding the language of the insurance contract, insur*645ers providing separate policies to one insured will be required to defend and provide coverage to the common insured in the proportion that the separate limits of their respective policies bear to the total limits of both policies.
In Houser v. Gilbert, 389 N.W.2d 626 (N.D.1986), I dissented to that portion of the majority opinion which reversed the trial court’s determination that one of the policies involved therein provided coverage only on an excess basis. In that dissent I observed that the “plain wording of the policy which makes the coverage excess ... is sufficient to affirm the trial court’s decision.” Houser v. Gilbert, supra at 631 (VandeWalle, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Assuming that the majority is correct that the excess coverage provision in Transamerica’s policy “is not ap-propos here,” the action by the majority in this instance is nevertheless similar to that of the Houser majority wherein the insurance companies conceded that if they prevailed on the issue of primary coverage, the loss should be apportioned between vehicle-related acts and nonvehicle-related acts, but the majority found that could not be accomplished.. Although in that instance I disagreed that the loss should be apportioned, if apportionment is required because both policies are primary, an attempt should be made to apportion according to the acts for which the policies provide coverage. That attempt has not been made or even considered by the trial court.
Despite contractual language in the policies to the contrary, the lesson of this opinion, when read with the opinion in Houser, is that a majority of this Court will impose a form of joint and several responsibility for coverage upon an individual’s insurers notwithstanding the provisions of the insurance contracts and the particular facts of the loss.
In each case we attempt to achieve a just result as dictated by the facts of the case and the existing law. Those results ought not be foreordained by judges’ perceptions of an equitable result. If the determination of the trial court is to be reversed it should be reversed only to the extent of remanding for a determination of whether or not Transamerica’s coverage is excess coverage and, if it is not, whether or not the responsibility for the loss may be apportioned according to the acts for which the policies provide coverage.