Court Opinion

ID: 9752907
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 18:43:27.698139+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:25.269661
License: Public Domain

O’Sullivan, J.
(dissenting). It is an accepted rule of construction that an ambiguous provision in an insurance policy will be liberally construed in favor of the insured. Raffel v. Travelers Indemnity Co., 141 Conn. 389, 392, 106 A.2d 716. But the existence of the rule is not a license to the court to *675declare ambiguous what is perfectly clear. Mendelsohn v. Automobile Ins. Co., 290 Mass. 228, 230, 195 N.E. 104; Barish-Sanders Motor Co. v. Fireman’s Fund Ins. Co., 134 Neb. 188, 191, 278 N.W. 374; Hamilton Trucking Service, Inc. v. Automobile Ins. Co., 39 Wash. 2d 688, 692, 237 P.2d 781. It is unnecessary to construe the obvious. Nor does the rule authorize the court, even when the policy is ambiguous, to distort the contractual provision in question and, by giving it a meaning not intended by the parties to the contract, cast upon the insurer a liability which it has not assumed. Porto v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 120 Conn. 196, 200, 180 A. 289; Komroff v. Maryland Casualty Co., 105 Conn. 402, 406, 135 A. 388. A court should be most diligent in seeing that an insurer does not escape liability for a risk which it has accepted and for which it has been paid a premium. What the majority are doing, however, is extending the liability of this defendant beyond the terms of its agreement. Miller Bros. Construction Co. v. Maryland Casualty Co., 113 Conn. 504, 513, 155 A. 709; Standard Fur Cutting Co. v. Caledonian Ins. Co., 113 Conn. 108, 113, 154 A. 153. To hold, as they do, that the lathe collided with the culvert stretches facts beyond their reality. This no more occurred than did the carrying vehicle collide with the bridge. Jenrette Transport Co. v. Atlantic Fire Ins. Co., 236 N.C. 534, 539, 73 S.E.2d 481. The majority, it seems to me, have reached an erroneous conclusion.