Court Opinion

ID: 9752126
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 17:37:58.485082+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:08.169530
License: Public Domain

GLASSMAN,
Justice, with whom ROBERTS, Justice, joins, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I agree that Jacques’s reliance on 24-A M.R.S.A. §§ 2903 and 2904 (1990) in an attempt to reach and apply the proceeds of Mackey’s legal malpractice insurance policy to the default judgment must fail and the trial court properly granted a summary judgment to American on that issue. I reach that conclusion, however, on the basis that a legal malpractice action is not within the purview of sections 2903 and 2904, and accordingly, the court should not determine this issue on the basis of constitutional due process. See State v. Bassford, 440 A.2d 1059, 1061 (Me.1982) (appellate courts should avoid expressing opinions on constitutional law when nonconsti-tutional resolution of issue in controversy exists); Osier v. Osier, 410 A.2d 1027, 1029 (Me.1980) (constitutional question to be decided only when “entirely necessary”).
Section 2904 is triggered only when a person “recovers a final judgment against any other person for any loss or damage specified in section 2903.... ” Section 2903 in turn specifies such loss as “accidental loss or damage on account of personal injury or death or on account of accidental damage to property_” A legal malpractice insurance policy insures against economic loss to clients as a result of an insured attorney’s negligence. Clearly such economic loss is not due to personal injury or death. Thus it must be considered accidental damage to property if it is to come within the scope of section 2904’s reach and apply provision.
A chose in action may for some purposes be intangible personal property. I believe, however, that a fair reading of sections 2903 and 2904 must lead to the conclusion that loss due to damage to such intangible property was not intended to be covered by those sections. Although we have previously stated it is not confined to vehicular insurance policies, Maine’s statutory reach and apply law codified at sections 2903 and 2904 was created to meet the proliferation of bodily injury and property damage due to vehicular accidents. See Marston v. Merchants Mutual Ins. Co., 319 A.2d 111, *722114 (Me.1974). In that context the phrase “damage to property” must necessarily have been intended by the legislature to include only tangible property capable of being damaged in such an “accidental” manner. That a claim against a policy for legal malpractice insurance does not come within the purview of sections 2903 or 2904 is supported by the Massachusetts case of Johnson Controls, Inc. v. Bowes, 381 Mass. 278, 409 N.E.2d 185 (1980). In Johnson Controls, the Massachusetts Supreme Court interpreted Mass.Gen.L. ch. 175, §§ 112 and 113, which contain nearly identical language to sections 2903 and 2904 and are “the parent statutefs] to [Maine’s] reach and apply law,” Michaud v. Mutual Fire, Marine & Inland Ins. Co., 505 A.2d 786, 789 (Me.1986), as not encompassing a legal malpractice insurance policy and held that the appropriate procedural vehicle for reaching such policy is pursuant to common law.