Court Opinion

ID: 9663137
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:29:01.413128+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:45.991334
License: Public Domain

Shepherd, J.
(concurring). I concur in the result. This state of affairs allows fraud to be perpetrated upon the people of this state by incompetent drivers in wholesale quantities. An uninsurable driver (i.e., a menace on the highways) can purchase a motor vehicle and arrange to have someone else who seldom, if ever, drives it place the insurance in his or her own name. The net result is that the owner/driver can proceed to endanger the public with impunity while the public is without the complete protection of the law.
*821As Allstate Ins Co v DAIIE, 142 Mich App 436; 369 NW2d 908 (1985), implies, this directly contravenes the spirit of the financial responsibility act, MCL 257.501; MSA 9.2201. However, Allstate indicates that the financial responsibility act was adopted prior to the no-fault act and the former act must therefore yield to the latter. Both Allstate and the majority opinion in this case conclude that there were conflicting policy considerations and the Legislature simply chose one alternative over others.
Plaintiff very graphically argues in her brief:
If this Court is inclined to balance the potential for good against the potential for disaster, the tragic consequences of allowing an insurance carrier to exclude the owner/reckless driver from coverage surely dominates the evaluation. Both in this action and in Allstate, supra, there is no suggestion that the owner is either handicapped or elderly. Rather, the excluded driver was executing a transparent "scam” to procure an insurance certificate at lower rates. It is unthinkable that the Legislature would encourage the insurance carriers to issue a certificate of insurance, notwithstanding that the obvious driver of the car is driving the car without insurance. It is inconceivable that the Legislature intended to allow this outrageous behavior.
In this action, the insurance carrier was fully aware that Donald Pickier was the owner of the truck. It was unconscionable for the insurance carrier to issue a certificate of insurance permitting him to register the truck, while simultaneously denying coverage of Donald Pickier, the actual driver of the vehicle. (This action was dismissed on the pleadings. Thus plaintiff has not yet had an opportunity to present evidence unequivocably demonstrating that the insurance carrier knew that Mrs. Pickier had access to several cars, including her own car.) This case is a dramatic *822counterexample to the contention that public policy requires that the insurance carrier be permitted to aid an owner in evading Michigan’s compulsory insurance law.
However, given the clear and unambiguous language of MCL 500.3009(2); MSA 24.13009(2), I can only conclude that this result is either what the Legislature intended or the result was unintended because the consequences were simply not anticipated or contemplated. The Supreme Court was never given the opportunity to address this issue because an application for leave to appeal was never filed in Allstate. This is understandable since plaintiff and defendant were both insurance companies. The loser in Allstate emerged a winner since it too will now be able to participate in the statutory scheme. (Plaintiff calls it a scam.)
Whatever label we place upon it here, it appears to me to be a label created by the statute. In fairness to insurance companies they are doing nothing more than following the law as it exists even though they must know that the present state of the law allows them to deliberately close their eyes to reality and forces the rest of us to drive on the highways under the illusion that the law has taken every precaution to force owners of automobiles not to drive without insurance.