Court Opinion

ID: 9608418
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:12:16.615636+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:46.270048
License: Public Domain

FADELEY, J.,
dissenting.
Plaintiff was injured by an uninsured motorist. Plaintiff seeks a declaration that defendant, her own insurer, must provide her with $100,000 of uninsured motorist coverage even though her policy stated that it provided only $25,000 of such coverage as of the time of her injury. Plaintiff claims the right to an increased amount of coverage arguing that defendant failed to comply with a statute that requires insurers to offer increased amounts of uninsured motorist coverage to their insureds whenever the insurer issues a motor vehicle liability policy. Defendant made the offer once, in 1985, with its first issuance to plaintiff, but it never again offered the higher amount of coverage at issuance of numerous changes and renewals thereafter.
The statute on which plaintiff bases her claim in this declaratory proceeding, ORS 742.502, provides in part that:
“Offers of uninsured motorist coverage larger than the amounts required by ORS 806.070 shall include underin-surance coverage * * * equal to the uninsured motorist coverage benefits less the amount recovered from other automobile liability insurance policies.” (Emphasis added.)
The statute does not prescribe any remedy for failure to make the offers, stated in the plural, required by it.
That lack of remedy is a matter for consideration by the legislature, not this court, in my opinion. The statute requires an offer, not inclusion of an additional contract. At oral argument, the insurer indicated that, if a new offer was statutorily required in this case, the court should declare that plaintiffs policy limits are $100,000 for uninsured motorist coverage. No contention questioning correctness of that remedy was raised.1
*54I cannot agree that the legislature’s purpose — to increase the amount of insurance coverage available to pay the costs of injuries to Oregonians — is met by the majority’s limiting interpretation of the mandatory statute. Specifically, I do not agree that the legislature meant to limit the written offer of uninsured and underinsured insurance only to the first time that a company deals with one of its individual customers, no matter how many later times there is a change in the insurance contract that is in force between the company and that individual insured. Yet, that limiting interpretation, which substantially negates the purpose of the statute, is the effect of delegating sole authority to the insurer to decide what constitutes issuing a new “policy” and, therefore, at what point, if ever, a new offer of underinsured coverage must be made. But that delegation to the insurer is the basis of the majority’s opinion. I cannot join in that limiting interpretation of the statute, an interpretation that negates the purpose of the statute. The dissenting opinion has the better of the argument concerning the correct interpretation of the statute.
In my opinion, a new issuance occurred — triggering the statutory duty to offer a larger amount of uninsured motorist coverage — each time that there was a major change in policy provisions or in coverage applicable between plaintiff and defendant. Not counting renewals for a new period as a new issuance, there were nonetheless several major changes during the years after plaintiff became defendant’s insured but prior to her injuries that prompted this declaratory proceeding. Accordingly, I cannot join the majority opinion’s reasoning.

 Normally, the assumptions of parties may not dictate the court’s remedies. Otherwise, our rule against deciding a hypothetical case could be circumvented by *54agreements between the parties. See State v. Thomas, 311 Or 182, 186 n 6, 806 P2d 689 (1991) (parties cannot limit appellate court to only the arguments that the parties raise). In this case, granting the declaration which the insurer agreed would be proper would not form a precedent for other cases, in my opinion.