Court Opinion

ID: 9845146
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:15:52.100278+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:52.852807
License: Public Domain

NEUMANN, Justice,
dissenting.
The majority tells us Score’s policy provides only gap coverage because it is similar to the policy construed in Thompson v. Nodak Mut. Ins. Co., 466 N.W.2d 115 (N.D.1991), which provided only gap coverage. The majority acknowledges the Thompson policy referred to amounts payable “under this coverage” while the Score policy does not, but claims the extra words don’t make any difference because in Thompson we didn’t say they made a difference.
I cannot agree with the majority’s statement that the phrase “under this coverage” in the Thompson v. Nodak insurance policy creates a “distinction without a difference.” The presence of that phrase in that policy not only makes a difference, it makes possible the result in that case. Without that phrase the policy’s reference in Thompson v. Nodak to “any amount payable” would have been ambiguous. It could have referred equally as well to the injured party’s damages (the “excess” theory) as to the injured party’s uninsured motorist coverage (the “gap” theory), were it not for the clarifying *214words “under this coverage” immediately following “any amount payable.”
The majority argues Thompson v. Nodak placed no particular emphasis on the words “under this coverage.” That statement of course is true enough, but proves little. Neither did the Thompson opinion place any particular emphasis on any of the other dozens of clarifying phrases in the opinion without which the policy would have been ambiguous.
The fact is the Score policy says it will pay “compensatory damages for bodily injury which an insured person is legally entitled to recover” (no limitation there), and then, under “Limits of Liability,” simply says “any amounts payable will be reduced by: 1. A payment made or amount payable ... under any collectible auto liability insurance ...” (no suggestion there, either, as to the meaning of “amounts payable”). Nothing in the language of the policy tells us “amounts payable” refers to the policy limits of Score’s underinsurance motorist coverage, rather than to the “compensatory damages” Score was “legally entitled to recover.” Because the policy is susceptible of two different reasonable interpretations, it is ambiguous, and such ambiguity is to be resolved in favor of coverage for the insured. Northwest G.F. Mut. Ins. Co. v. Norgard, 518 N.W.2d 179, 181 (N.D.1994). I would reverse.