Court Opinion

ID: 9797806
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:29:44.895072+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:57:42.411238
License: Public Domain

OPALA, J.,
with whom Hodges, J., joins, concurring.
¶ 1 I am unable to read into the provisions of 36 O.S.2001 § 36361 a statutory portability mandate for extending a fleet policy’s UM coverage to include persons injured in a privately-owned vehicle driven on the insured employer’s business. Neither can I accede to today’s dissent which counsels the court to invalidate the insurance policy’s restrictive language excluding from UM coverage persons in vehicles operated on the insured’s business but not owned by the insured. An insurance policy that restricts UM coverage to vehicles owned by the insured — i.e., to those which are covered for liability and for UM protection — does not offend the terms of § 3636.
¶ 2 More simply stated, I can find no textually demonstrable warrant in the language of § 3636 for creating, by our pronouncement in this case, a compulsory UM coverage for on-the-job vehicular injuries inflicted (by under- or uninsured tortfeasors) upon persons in automobiles not owned by the insured employer. A contrary resolution of this legal question would, by judicial fiat, establish a mandatory insurance regime clearly duplicative of (or parallel with) the employer’s statutory workers’ compensation liability. In short, one who as owner insures a fleet of vehicles for liability and UM protection but its non-owned automobiles solely for *231respondeat superior liability, will not be deemed, by its failure to reject in writing UM coverage for non-owned vehicles, to have purchased UM protection for the latter automobiles.
¶ 3 I hence concur in the court’s opinion and join the separate writing by HODGES, J.
HODGES, J.,
concurring, with whom Opala, J. joins.
¶ 1 This case involves uninsured motorist/under insured motorist (UM/UIM) coverage. While on the job, Winfred Nimrod Graham, an employee of CKE Restaurants (CKE), was injured. At the time, Graham was driving his own car. CKE’s liability insurance policy covered employees while they were driving their own cars, but excluded the same employees under its UM/UIM provisions. Graham sued the insurance carrier under the UM/UIM provisions.
¶ 2 The issue of first impression is whether section 3636 requires that UM/UIM coverage be provided to all persons covered for liability. Section 3636 requires that an insurer offer UM/UIM coverage in the same amount as liability. It also provides that the name insured has the right to reject UM/UIM coverage in writing. Further, in Shepard v. Farmers Ins., 1983 OK 103, ¶ 2, 678 P.2d 250, 251, this Court held that parties can limit or restrict the insurer’s liability so long as the restriction or limitation does not violate public policy. In the present case, the exclusionary language “does not violate the express statutory provisions of [section 3636], rather it exists as an unambiguous contract provision. To interpret the contract or the statute differently would be to rewrite one or both....” See id.
¶ 3 Nothing in title 36, section 3636 invalidates the contractual limitation in the current policy. Because the parties intended to limit the insurer’s exposure and the limitation does not violated section 3636’s statement of public policy, I concur in the Court’s opinion.

. As it is stated in today’s opinion, the version of § 3636 found in the 2001 decennial compilation has remained unchanged since 1994. It was in force when the accident in suit occurred in 1997.