Court Opinion

ID: 9663136
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:29:01.409302+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:45.990281
License: Public Domain

C. W. Simon, J.
Plaintiffs appeal as of right from an order granting defendant’s motion for summary judgment made pursuant to GCR 1963, 117.2(1). Plaintiff had filed a declaratory judgment action seeking to have the named driver exclusion found invalid if the named driver is also the owner of the vehicle.
The facts of this case are not in dispute. On May 27, 1981, an accident took place involving an automobile owned and operated by plaintiff Karen Muxlow and a pickup truck owned and operated by Donald Pickier. At the time of the accident, the truck was insured under a policy issued by defendant to Donna M. Pickier, mother of Donald Pickier. The policy listed Donna Pickier as the named insured and principal driver and specifically excluded Donald Pickier.
Plaintiffs brought suit against Donald Pickier for the injuries they had sustained as a result of the accident. The defense of the suit was tendered to defendant, which refused to defend on the grounds of driver exclusion. Subsequently, a de*819fault judgment was entered against Mr. Pickier. After an unsuccessful garnishment attempt, plaintiffs instituted the declaratory judgment action against defendant.
Plaintiffs argue that the no-fault act and the financial responsibility act required that an owner maintain insurance and that the insurance policy be for the benefit of the person who is required to furnish proof of financial responsibility — the owner. Thus, plaintiffs argue, it is against public policy to allow the vehicle owner to be named as an excluded driver on an insurance policy.
This issue has already been decided adversely to plaintiffs’ position. MCL 500.3009(2); MSA 24.13009(2) provides:
When authorized by the insured, automobile liability or motor vehicle liability coverage may be excluded when a vehicle is operated by a named person. Such exclusion shall not be valid unless the following notice is on the face of the policy or the declaration page or certificate of the policy and on the certificate of insurance . . .: Warning— when a named excluded person operates a vehicle all liability coverage is void — no one is insured. Owners of the vehicle and others legally responsible for the acts of the named excluded person remain fully personally liable.
This Court, in Allstate Ins Co v DAIIE, 142 Mich App 436; 369 NW2d 908 (1985), recently interpreted the statute and after lengthy analysis held "that the named driver exclusion in MCL 500.3009(2) may properly be applied to the owner of a motor vehicle.” 142 Mich App 443.
Plaintiffs’ public policy arguments have previously been addressed by this Court. For instance, in DAIIE v Comm’r of Ins, 86 Mich App 473, 479-480; 272 NW2d 689 (1978), this Court found that *820the Legislature had balanced other countervailing public policy considerations in favor of allowing driver exclusions. See also Allstate Ins v DAIIE, supra.
Requiring that owners not be named excluded drivers on insurance policies would not solve plaintiffs’ public policy considerations. For example, in this case, if Donald Pickier tried to obtain a certificate of insurance so he could obtain registration without buying insurance himself, he could easily have transferred the car to his mother’s name so that she could have obtained a policy excluding Donald Pickier, an exclusion which plaintiff’s conceded would be valid. The effect on plaintiff’s potential recovery would be the same.
In summary, the choice by the Legislature among competing policy considerations is best left to its determination and is not for the courts to question. "The no-fault act is experimental and innovative, and in creating this scheme of insurance the Legislature was faced with difficult policy issues. The question of named driver exclusions was one such issue.” DAIIE v Comm’r of Ins, supra, p 480.
Affirmed.
M. J. Kelly, P.J., concurred.