Court Opinion

ID: 9457255
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:17:17.312446+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:17.014490
License: Public Domain

LEWIS, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
I must respectfully dissent for, to me, the result reached by the majority appears to be based upon a faulty premise. In simple summation, the main opinion holds that the insurance carrier can have no liability because its principal insured, the father, has incurred no actionable liability. I cannot accept this premise as a matter of law at this point in the proceedings.
Admittedly this unfortunate child was within the insurance coverage had he been treated under other and usual circumstances. Coverage, as such, is not denied. But coverage is now judicially refuted solely because the child was committed to the Los Lunas Hospital by virtue of a state judicial decree which limited, but did not eliminate, the obligation of the father for support and care of his child. After judicial inquiry the New Mexico court, giving due weight to the mandate of the applicable and cited New Mexico statute requiring primary consideration of the ability of the parents to pay, set the continuing obligation of the father to be payment of “the sum of fifty dollars a month for the said minor’s support and including any medical expenses not paid by insurance”. (Emphasis added.) To me, the decree clearly should be interpreted as establishing the ability of the father to pay fifty dollars a month and any additional medical expenses incurred for the minor’s benefit and covered by such applicable insurance as might exist. If the father has insurance he has the ability to pay and the decree should be so interpreted, and the father’s obligation so established. Surely the New Mexico court’s reference to insurance was not meaningless.
It may well be that appellees, for reasons different from those here considered, may have no ultimate liability in this ease. For example, claim is made that the services rendered to the child were not made by a hospital within the meaning of that term as contained in the policy. This issue, and others, are not resolved and would seem to involve issues of fact. In any event, I would not absolve the insurance company of any potential liability in the case’s present posture.