Court Opinion

ID: 9729710
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:47:08.803403+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:00.684592
License: Public Domain

OLSZEWSKI, Judge,
dissenting:
Since we believe that the trial court properly relied on Ector v. Motorists Insurance Companies, 391 Pa.Super. 458, 571 *223A.2d 457, allocatur denied, 525 Pa. 646, 581 A.2d 572 (1990), we must respectfully dissent.
In Ector, this Court allowed an uninsured pedestrian, who was struck by a stolen car, to recover uninsured motorist benefits after finding that the policy behind the MVFRL was analogous to the “maximum feasible restoration” policy of the No-Fault Act. Id. at 465, 571 A.2d at 461. In Jeffrey v. Erie Insurance Exchange, 423 Pa.Super. 483, 621 A.2d 635 (1993), allocatur denied, 537 Pa. 651, 644 A.2d 736 (1994), an en banc panel rejected this underlying policy rationale and therefore limited Ector. The Jeffrey panel wrote:
We disagree, however, with any implication in Ector that our responsibility to “liberally construe” the UMCA and the MVFRL is as broad a judicial mandate to effectuate coverage as was the “maximum feasible restoration” principle in the now defunct No-Fault Act.
Id. at 495 n. 5, 621 A.2d at 641 n. 5. Similarly, in Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company v. Cummings, 438 Pa.Super. 586, 652 A.2d 1338 (1994), this Court distinguished Ector and sought to further limit its holding. Despite these limitations, however, no court has expressly overruled Ector.
Since Ector has not been expressly overruled, we agree with the trial court that it controls and allows for recovery in this case. Like the plaintiff in Ector, the plaintiff here was an uninsured pedestrian struck by a stolen car. The majority tries to avoid this result by focusing on the fact that the maximum feasible restoration theory no longer exists. In Ector, however, the court did not rely on the theory of maximum feasible restoration. Instead, it relied on a liberal construction theory which the court found closely analogous to maximum feasible restoration. While this liberal construction theory has been severely limited by later cases, it is still a viable theory of recovery under the factual scenario presented in Ector.
We recognize that the Ector decision is often criticized. In this case, the trial court expressed its disagreement with the rationale of Ector and invited the appellate courts to reexam*224ine the decision. The trial judge recognized, however, that Ector was still binding precedent which he was not free to ignore. Like the trial court, we are constrained by Ector to allow recovery in this case, and therefore we would affirm the order below.