Court Opinion

ID: 9848894
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:29:33.967372+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:52.457173
License: Public Domain

Robb, J.
(dissenting): This appeal comes to us involving a question not heretofore submitted to this court and while I realize that in establishing a rule for the first time we do not have to follow decisions of other jurisdictions, I cannot agree that the rule applied in the majority opinion is the appropriate one under these facts and circumstances.
In the first place, I think the majority view makes for a very technical, strained, and narrow construction of the word use, in opposition to the liberal construction usually given to the wording of omnibus clauses of insurance policies. I agree with the statement in the opinion in Liberty Mutual Ins. Co. v. Steenberg Construction Co., 225 F. 2d 294, to the effect that the word use in omnibus clauses is one of broad import and has been accorded flexible and unabsolute content as occasion has arisen to evaluate such clauses in the light of the circumstances of varying factual situations. Many cases recognize use as extending in “broad gauge” to the serving of some purpose or end of the permittee where right of control was such as to impose a legal responsibility upon the permittee “for its incidents, with those incidents having, as a matter of coverage consideration, a tie of practical relationship to the purpose or end which the named insured, either generally or specifically, has allowed the vehicle to serve.” (p. 297.)
It was further stated in effect that while insurers can impose any coverage limitations as to permittees they desire, any such adopted limitation, however artful the language, will be judicially *14scrutinized and will have to be able to stand on its own feet “without any room for rationally reading it in broad reconciliation and harmony with the fundamental scope of general omnibus-clause concept and design.” (pp. 296, 297.)
In Schmidt v. Utilities Ins. Co., 154 A. L. R. 1088, anno. 1096, drivers of a coal company’s truck used wooden blocks to facilitate delivery into the coal bins of a hospital. Personal injury resulted through acts involving the wooden blocks after they were placed on the sidewalk and while neither the trucks nor the drivers were present. The court there held there was coverage arising out of the omnibus clause of the insurance policy because of the “ownership, maintenance, or use” of the insured trucks. It said the injury need not be the direct and proximate result of the use of an automobile to come within the coverage of a policy indemnifying against liability for damages by accident and arising out of the ownership, maintenance, or use thereof. (Headnote 3.)
Time and space prohibit the reiteration of the discussion beginning in the annotation of the same case at page 1096.
On construction of the term use, an annotation in 89 A. L. R. 2d 163, begins with this statement:
“In a relatively few cases the word ‘use’ in an ‘ownership, maintenance or use’ clause has been given a specific construction, and it appears that the word ‘use’ is the general ‘catch-all’ of the insuring clause.”
While it is true the semi-trailer truck had to be towed to the place of unloading the pipe in our present case, the towing away of the truck from the place where the pipe was unloaded should be considered to be fully in contemplation of the use of the semi-trailer truck in my opinion.
The most applicable case and the one applying the better rule to my way of thinking is American Fire & Casualty Co. v. Allstate Ins. Co., 214 F. 2d 523, where it was said:
“The towing of a jeep was not a use of it so unusual as to be beyond contemplation of parties to liability policy covering it, and accident occurring during tow arose out of the ‘ownership, maintenance and use,’ notwithstanding that jeep was not running on own power and that it carried no passengers, and insurer would be required to share liability with liability insurer of the towing automobile.” (Headnote 1.)
In view of the foregoing authorities, I would affirm the judgment of the trial court since in arriving at that judgment, it obviously gave ample consideration to the stipulation of facts including the *15allegations of the petition in Trimmell’s original action against Esfeld.
Wertz, J., joins in the foregoing dissenting opinion.