Court Opinion

ID: 9572350
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:41:04.029508+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:32:33.450695
License: Public Domain

DAVIES Judge
(concurring specially).
I concur in the result, but find unsatisfactory the analysis of the majority, resting on a finding of insurance policy ambiguity.
I would instead base the decision on the public policy requirements of Minnesota’s system of compulsory automobile insurance and on the doctrine of reasonable expectations. The analysis of the majority, turning on the technicality of whether a fee is collected to pay for pizza delivery, is inadequate to deal either with the public policy requirements of our compulsory insurance system or with the expectations of the ordinary purchaser of family automobile insurance.
Minn.Stat. § 65B.48 (1992) requires all automobiles operated in the state of Minnesota to be insured; and under Minn.Stat. § 65B.49, subd. 3 (1992), compulsory insurance includes, not only the no-fault benefits, but also the liability coverages at issue in this case.
Appellant Northland Insurance Co. sold James Watroba an automobile insurance policy that purported to satisfy Minnesota’s compulsory insurance requirements. Under the majority’s analysis, that insurance would be nullified on the occasion of this accident except for the fact that a policy exclusion was inappropriately drafted. If effective, however, such an exclusion would defeat the strong policy underlying Minnesota’s system of compulsory insurance. See Minn.Stat. § 65B.42 (1992); Tuenge v. Konetski, 320 N.W.2d 420, 421 (Minn.1982) (One of the major purposes of the No-Fault Act is “ ‘to relieve the severe economic distress of uncompensated victims of automobile accidents within this state.’ ”).
I believe that, once an insurer purports to provide the mandated insurance coverages for an identified automobile, the insurer cannot escape liability by means of exclusions that apply to rather ordinary and incidental commercial uses of the vehicle. In the long run, the majority’s reliance on policy ambiguity will be either destructive or ineffectual; given enough time, the drafters of insurance policies will eliminate ambiguity and, thus, foreclose the device the majority uses to reach an appropriate result.
Here, the vehicle was essentially a family automobile used incidentally by Watroba in his part-time employment delivering pizzas for Cheetah Pizza, Inc. The failure of Wa-troba to disclose that usage of the automobile at the time the insurance was purchased is wholly foreseeable. Watroba may have obtained the job after the insurance was purchased, or, if he was so employed at the time of purchase, he might reasonably have viewed this activity as a de minimis commercial use that he was not required to disclose. Therefore, the sanction against the undisclosed usage should not be a denial of coverage (making the insured a misdemeanant!), but rather a claim for additional premiums, premiums commensurate with the additional risk entailed in the undisclosed commercial usage.
Watroba, I am certain, is far short of the line defining where use of a vehicle “to transport persons or property” is such a substantial part of vehicle usage that it becomes fraud on the insurance carrier. Even if viewed as actual fraud, it does not justify enforcement of the exclusion.
Regarding the doctrine of reasonable expectations, most families purchasing automobile insurance expect their coverage to reach incidental, irregular “commercial” use of the vehicle. See Atwater Creamery Co. v. Western Nat’l Mutual Ins. Co., 366 N.W.2d 271, 278 (Minn.1985) (reasonable expectations doctrine enables courts to “construe insurance contracts without having to rely on [or bend and stretch] arbi*694trary rules which do not reflect real-life situations”).
I concur for the reasons stated in this opinion.1

. A priority of coverage issue lurks within these facts, but was not raised.