Court Opinion

ID: 9884761
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 03:10:56.632774+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:40:55.295661
License: Public Domain

CRIPPEN, Judge
(concurring specially).
I concur in the decision to affirm the trial court, but with additional observations.
1. Twice this court has said that existence of an accident must be determined from the view of the tortfeasor. Petersen v. Croft, 447 N.W.2d 903 (Minn.App.1989), pet. for rev. denied (Minn. Jan. 12, 1990); Wilson v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 451 N.W.2d 216 (Minn.App.1990), pet. for rev. denied (Minn. March 22, 1990). Although the Minnesota Supreme Court declined to review each of these decisions, appellant asks that another panel of judges of this court depart from the prior holdings. Pending any additional occasion of the supreme court to review this issue, I would reject appellant’s plea solely for the sake of consistent insurance practices.
2. Petersen and Wilson addressed uninsured motorist coverage, and we must decide whether the rationale of those decisions also governs appellant’s claim for no-fault benefits. Under the insurance contract here, I find no reasonable basis for analyzing the accident issue differently for uninsured motorist and no-fault claims. This view is explained by examining the insurance contract between the parties.
Respondent extended coverage to appellant for injuries chargeable to the owner or driver of an uninsured motor vehicle and “caused by accident arising out of the operation, maintenance or use of an uninsured motor vehicle.” The policy also provided no-fault benefits for injury “caused by accident resulting from the maintenance or use of a motor vehicle.” Because of the similar language in both coverage sections, a genuine effort to interpret contract language must treat both coverage topics alike in addressing the accident and use issues. Although the two coverage provisions involve different public policy issues, both contain nearly identical contract language on the topics of “accident” and “maintenance or use” of a vehicle. While the uninsured motorist provision indicates that only the tortfeasor’s vehicle be considered, the no-fault coverage provision suggests that the insured’s vehicle use be considered. This distinction is irrelevant here *231since both the insured and the tortfeasor were driving cars when the insured was injured.
3. Although we choose not to contradict Petersen and Wilson, I do not defend those decisions. There is merit, I believe, in criticism already directed at them. See Wilson, 451 N.W.2d at 220 (Huspeni, J., dissenting). Also, in my opinion, the accident doctrine announced in Petersen and Wilson may be an anomaly given the supreme court’s analysis of use and maintenance in Continental Western Ins. Co. v. Klug, 415 N.W.2d 876 (Minn.1987). This conclusion requires a few additional comments on the Klug rationale.
It is undisputed here that (1) for purposes of uninsured motorist coverage, appellant’s injuries resulted from operation, maintenance or use of a motor vehicle by Robert Taylor, and (2) for purposes of no-fault coverage, her injuries arose out of maintenance or use of a motor vehicle. The parties and the court agree that the maintenance and use topic is governed by Klug.
The injury suffered by appellant clearly involved automobiles. An examination of the tortfeasor’s state of mind, however defended, leads us back to issues already resolved in Klug. A study of the tort-feasor’s intentions, however otherwise explained, is nothing more than a study of causation. Under this analysis, the intentions of the tortfeasor suggest only that his use of an automobile was incidental to the harm done, or that appellant’s injuries were not causally connected with Taylor’s use of a motor vehicle. Yet, in Klug’s language, as a matter of law the tort-feasor’s “actions of driving and shooting were inextricably linked.” Id. at 878. The supreme court held this was so even though it was stipulated that the assaulting driver’s conduct was “the result of” his mental illness. Id. at 877.
Normally speaking, of course, injuries could involve use or maintenance of a motor vehicle but still be caused by some circumstances other than an ordinary motor vehicle accident. It is important to observe, however, that the issue of causation is already determined by deciding that motor vehicle use or maintenance is included under policy provisions on that subject. Under the policy here, uninsured motorist coverage relates to an accident “arising out of” use and maintenance. No-fault coverage relates to injuries from an accident “resulting from” use or maintenance. It was this causative condition that was treated expansively in Klug. In Klug causation was found adequate in circumstances not unlike those in the case now being reviewed. We should not employ a construction of accident language to contradict the causation analysis resolved in Klug.
It has been repeatedly observed, of course, that the Klug court did not have an accident issue before it and remanded for further proceedings on that question. While this might imply that the intentional act considered in that case could have been an accident, a narrow view of accident language seems wholly at odds with the rationale of Klug on causation. See Wilson, 451 N.W.2d at 221, n. 1 (Huspeni, J., dissenting). Consistent with the logic and importance of Klug, I can find no reason to examine the tortfeasor’s state of mind to determine if an accident occurred here.
Our prior decisions on the accident issue appear to be premised on an effort to give the contract reference to an accident some meaning. See Petersen, 447 N.W.2d at 905-6. This concern easily misleads us. First, although we cannot envision a nonac-cident viewed from the injured person’s perspective, the accident language may have been thoughtlessly employed by insurers with no different perspective in mind. Intentional act exclusions have been employed historically to deal with misconduct of persons purchasing insurance. Also, as observed before, an accident doctrine which requires exploring causation conflicts with the Klug construction of other contract language, the use and maintenance clauses.
4. In my opinion, the decisions in Petersen and Wilson cannot be defended on grounds not stated by the panels deciding those cases. More specifically, I do not agree that there is merit in a separate legal *232rationale for denying uninsured motorist coverage based on speculation about definitions or exclusions that may have governed coverage for the tortfeasor if he had been insured.
First, it must be remembered that the contract language here requires a similar accident analysis for uninsured motorist and no-fault benefits. Theorizing on the nature of uninsured motorist coverage risks an unwarranted distinction between accidents under one coverage and the other.
More important, uninsured motorist coverage is a contract to pay damages for bodily injury an insured “is legally entitled to collect” from the uninsured driver. This coverage addresses all of the uninsured driver’s liabilities, not those the driver might be able to insure or those covered by some hypothetical policy the driver could have purchased. This coverage is also consistent with Minnesota’s No-Fault Automobile Insurance Act, which defines uninsured motorist coverage as a policy to protect insureds “who are legally entitled to recover damages” from owners or operators of uninsured vehicles. Minn.Stat. § 65B.43, subd. 18 (1990). Theoretical considerations about coverage cannot supplant contract and statutory language that govern the issue.