Court Opinion

ID: 9729824
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:49:37.713113+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:01.407661
License: Public Domain

Clifford, J.
(dissenting). The Court here reaches what surely must be the outer limits of the “hell or high water” doctrine, so denominated by Justice Hall and otherwise referred to as the “initial permission” rule. Small v. Schuncke, 42 N. J. 407, 416 (1964) (Hall, J., concurring). Sharing his hankering for higher places and drier ground, I think that had I been a member of the Court during the time the “initial permission” doctrine was being formulated and developed in New Jersey, I would have shunned, as did Justice *440Hall, the straining of common language and suspension of reasoned analysis that have led to the zany result which application of that doctrine, now in its full-blown maturity, is said to dictate in this case. See Baesler v. Globe Indemnity Co., 33 N. J. 148 (1960); Matits v. Nationwide Mutual Ins. Co., 33 N. J. 488, 498 (1960) (Hall, J., dissenting); Indemnity Ins. Co. v. Metropolitan Cas. Ins. Co. of N. Y., 33 N. J. 507, 516 (1960) (Hall, J., dissenting); Small v. Schuncke, supra, 42 N. J. at 416 (Hall, J., concurring); Selected Risks Ins. Co. v. Zullo, 48 N. J. 362 (1966); Odolecki v. Hartford Acc. & Indem. Co., 55 N. J. 542 (1970); State Farm v. Zurich Am. Ins. Co., 62 N. J. 155 (1973).
However, I confess to a certain reluctance to embark on the not demonstrably profitable chore of attempting to reshape the “initial permission” rule. While I might warm to the task of rescuing both the policy and the statutory language, N. J. S. A. 39 :6-46, from the rigamarole to which they have been reduced by the line of cases referred to above, I detect no present inclination on the part of a necessary three additional members of the Court to lend support to that endeavor. There appears to be little sentiment favoring re-exploration of territory long since bereft of its virginity. Therefore, as a matter of judicial discipline and for purposes of this case, I am willing to accept as controlling, without conceding its validity, the principle announced by the majority that
* * r as long as the initial use of the vehicle is with the consent, express or implied, of the insured, any subsequent changes in the character or scope of the use, such as from a passenger to a driver, do not require the additional specific consent of the insured. Only where the deviation from the use consented to amounts to “theft or the like” will coverage be precluded under the insured’s policy.
[Ante at 437.]
But quite apart from whatever disagreement I might have with this principle, it is on the element of “theft or the like” that I think this case stumbles. While we may have long since swallowed ■ the camel of “implied con*441sent to use” a vehicle, we continue to strain at the gnat of “theft or the like.” That handy expression — perfectly understandable, I would suppose, to a layman but apparently less so to the refined legal mind — early on found its way into the articulation of the “initial permission” rule, Matits v. Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co., supra, 33 N. J. at 497, and was perpetuated in Small v. Schuncke, supra, 42 N. J. at 413. Odolecki, supra, simplified the inquiry even more by translating “theft or the like” into “an unlawful taking.” 33 N. J. at 547. And so in this ease if Nicholas Scibetta’s control of Mrs. Leonard’s automobile, which he was driving when the accident occurred, was achieved by “theft or the like” or if his taking over the car was “unlawful,” then, as everyone readily acknowledges, coverage is not available through Mrs. Leonard’s insurer, the defendant New Jersey Manufacturers Insurance Company (NJM), and the injured passenger’s recovery is limited to the $50,000 provided by plaintiff, Motor Club Fire & Casualty Company (Motor Club), Nicholas Scibetta’s carrier.
The majority opinion adequately states the facts pertinent to the present inquiry, ante at 429. Let them be restated here:
* * * Mrs. Leonard stopped at an angled intersection on Bloomfield Avenue and waited for a pause in the traffic. Suddenly Nick began climbing across the front, over his mother. He grabbed the steering wheel, telling Mrs. Leonard to get out of the car. Mrs. Leonard, stunned and frightened by Nick’s actions and expression, pressed down the emergency brake and exited from the driver’s side onto a traffic island in the street. Mrs. Leonard testified at trial: “I knew I had to get out * * * [b]ecause he was practically in the seat there and I knew he had the wheel.” Mrs. Seibetta unsuccessfully pleaded with her son to desist. Nick succeeded in crawling across the front seat, took the wheel, and drove, onto Bloomfield Avenue. Almost immediately, the automobile struck the rear of another car, went out of control, and crashed into an office building.
While the Appellate Division did not specifically characterize Nicholas’ conduct as amounting to “theft or the *442like” or as being otherwise “unlawful,” it did point out that his operation followed a “coerced ouster of the owner from the automobile” and hence was an “unauthorized seizure and operation.” Motor Club Fire & Cas. Co. v. N. J. Mfrs. Ins. Co., 135 N. J. Super. 362, 371 (App. Div. 1975). Despite this unassailed and unassailable conclusion by the court below, the majority refuses to fit the round peg of the facts into the round hole of an “unlawful taking” because, it says, the “theft” component of the exclusion from coverage connotes “nothing less than the wilfull taking of another’s car with the intent permanently to deprive the owner of its possession and use * * and the “or the like” component of the exception contemplates “conduct much more like traditional theft than the conduct here involved.” Ante at 438. The round peg is, mirabile dictu, rendered square in the absence of proof of “something like” traditional theft — this, despite the fact that, as the majority puts it, Nicholas “seized control of Mrs. Leonard’s car” (ante at 439) by bodily forcing her out of it, frightening her and scaring his own mother “stiff” in the process before driving off, leaving the owner stranded in the highway.
It may reasonably be assumed that in the present context the expression “theft or the like” was intended to set the final boundary beyond which “consent to use” a vehicle will not be stretched. The phrase “or the like” attached to “theft” is not likely to have been casually or thoughtlessly dropped into our decisional law in the first instance and mindlessly repeated in other cases thereafter. A meaning must have been ascribed to it. And if “or the like” means anything, it must mean something short of theft in the technical sense. Counsel for Motor Club conceded as much at the first oral argument before us. I would suppose (it being left by the majority entirely to supposition) that the only element of traditional theft lacking in Nicholas’ conduct in the case before us is the intention permanently, rather than temporarily, to deprive the owner of her ve*443hide. And so, it seems to me, his conduct is “like” — albeit less than —■ traditional theft.
Furthermore, if we are. to accept Odolecki’s dilution of “theft or the like” to “an unlawful taking,” 55 N. J. at 547, then manifestly the facts of this ease satisfy the requirement of unlawful conduct. For what else 'is an unauthorized seizure of a motor vehicle, accomplished by an assault on and coerced ouster of the owner, if not plainly unlawful ? Such action, the antithesis of permissive or consensual use, amounts to a violation of N. J. S. A. 2A:170-38 (Supp. 1976-77), making the unlawful taking or using of a means of conveyance a disorderly persons offense; and it seems clear that to demonstrate a violation thereof, there need not be shown any intention permanently to deprive the vehicle’s owner of its use.
Finally, the majority suggests “it is likely that Mrs. Leonard would reasonably have expected her policy to cover her friend Nick when, according to his testimony, he began driving the car because he wanted to return home.” Ante at 439. Quite apart from the entirely speculative nature of that gratuitous observation, unsupported by a single word in the record, its reliability as a basis for determining consent to use the vehicle in question suffers from the glaring defect of its hindsight character. See Matits v. Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co., supra, 33 N. J. at 499 (Hall, J., dissenting).
Giving the expressions “theft or the like” and “unlawful taking” their plain and generally accepted meanings, I conclude that Nicholas Scibetta’s use of Mrs. Leonard’s vehicle at the time of this accident was without her consent. Therefore, there was no coverage under NJM’s policy and no obligation to defend.
I would affirm the judgment of the Appellate Division.
Justice Mountain joins in this dissenting opinion.
For reversal — Justices Sullivan, Passman and Scheeibee and Judges Coneoed and Caeton — 5.
For affirmance- — Justices Mountain and Clieeoed — 2.