Court Opinion

ID: 9699546
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 20:32:51.516913+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:52.799522
License: Public Domain

Lowe, J.,

concurring and dissenting:

In light of the exclusionary clause in the Jamestown policy, I fully concur that Jamestown was not liable to defend Getson. What responsibility Jamestown had ran only to its insured by virtue of that contract between them.
I cannot agree, however, that similar reasoning should be applied to the responsibility of the Unsatisfied Claim and Judgment Fund to the Elliotts. The Fund was never intended as a substitute insurer protecting a tort-feasor (Getson) against liability. Rather, it had the public purpose *576of providing some compensation to an injured party (Elliott) when a motor vehicle tort-feasor was neither financially responsible nor insured against liability, for motor vehicle torts. The Fund is more akin to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Act in purpose than to an insurance contract. While looking for guidance in cases interpreting insurance contracts, the majority acknowledge that the Court of Appeals was most hesitant to do so in Frazier v. Unsatisfied Claim and Judgment Fund Board, 262 Md. 115. Speaking for the Court in Frazier, Judge Singley stated, at 118:
“We are reluctant to accept the notion that the gloss of judicial interpretation which may surround the provisions of the standard automobile insurance policy should necessarily be controlling in cases under our Unsatisfied Claim and Judgment Fund Law. We have noted that the Act is remedial in character, Maddy v. Jones, 230 Md. 172, 179, 186 A. 2d 482 (1962) and must be liberally construed, and while due regard must be given to the protection of the Fund, Wheeler v. Unsatisfied Claim & Judgment Fund, 259 Md. 232, 239, 269 A. 2d 593 (1970); Hawks v. Gottschall, 241 Md. 147, 215 A. 2d 745 (1966), in the interest of protecting the innocent victims whom the Act was intended to benefit, we are disposed to consider, but not necessarily to be bound by, decisions involving the interpretation of insurance contracts.”
I find Frazier more apposite and far more persuasive than the language from a 1939 Mississippi case quoted by the Court of Appeals while interpreting the language of a contract of insurance coverage relied upon by the majority, National Indemnity v. Ewing, 235 Md. 145.
In Frazier a mother was driving her Chevrolet convertible on the evening of July Fourth, with her five-year old son a passenger in the rear seat of the open car. According to the mother, an unidentified car, going in the opposite direction, passed her and as it did, the driver of the car threw a lighted firecracker or cherry bomb into the rear seat of her car. *577Distracted by the explosion and by her son’s cries, she lost control of her car and hit a tree. Both she and the son were injured. The mother and her husband filed petitions in the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County in which they sought leave to sue the Unsatisfied Claim and Judgment Fund Board. From an order denying their petition, they appealed. The court below concluded, “as a matter of law,” that the injuries sustained did not “arise out of the ownership, maintenance, and use of the unidentified car.” The Court of Appeals reversed, stating at 117 and 119:
“The question, of course, is whether the Fraziers’ injuries arose ‘out of the ownership, maintenance or use of a motor vehicle.’
We conclude that for purposes of determining whether leave to sue the Board should have been granted, the injuries under the facts of this case did arise out of the ownership, operation or use of an unidentified motor vehicle.”
I can see little difference between the Fund being liable for the action of a passing motorist throwing a cherry bomb or firecracker into a victim’s car and being liable for the action of a passing motorist who stops his car, jumps out and forcefully throws himself into the victim’s car with the avowed purpose of doing injury to the driver of the car he has just passed and whose passage he has just blocked, which injury is done without the victim having ever been fully extracted therefrom.
The majority’s heavy reliance upon Merchants Company v. Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, 188 So. 571 (Miss. 1939) is misplaced. The excerpt from that case found so significant by the majority is:
“Our conclusion, under a policy such as is here before us, is that where a dangerous situation causing injury is one which arose out of or had its source in, the use or operation of the automobile, *578the chain of responsibility must be deemed to possess the requisite articulation with the use or operation until broken by the intervention of some event which has no direct or substantial relation to the use or operation, — which is to say, that the event which breaks the chain, and which, therefore, would exclude liability under the automobile policy, must be an event which bears no direct or substantial relation to the use or operation; and until an event of the latter nature transpires the liability under the policy exists.”
I cannot subscribe to the argument that the event which broke the chain of use of the Getson automobile was his stopping the automobile and then assaulting Elliott. The attack upon Elliott was obviously made in “hot blood” occasioned by the use or misuse of one or both vehicles. In a sense, a fight began between Elliott and Getson with the combatants using automobiles as weapons. It culminated with Getson leaping from his automobile into the automobile of Elliott and there finishing the battle. It was all part of one and the same transaction.
Thus, I am of the opinion that the facts to be developed at a trial on the merits could take such a posture that the trier of facts could well find that Elliott suffered at the hands of Getson “damages resulting from bodily injury . . . arising out of the ownership, maintenance, or use of a motor vehicle . . . .” If the Legislature had intended an exclusion for intentional torts such as the exclusionary clause under which Jamestown was released, the Legislature would have provided for such exclusion.
While concededly the issue here is a close one, I am persuaded we should have resolved it against the Fund at this stage of the proceedings in view of the admonition of the Court of Appeals that the statute is remedial in nature and should be liberally construed — not on behalf of the tort-feasor, but on behalf of the injured party. Frazier v. Unsatisfied Claim and Judgment Fund Board, supra, 262 Md. at 118; Maddy v. Jones, 230 Md. 172, 179.
I respectfully dissent.