Court Opinion

ID: 9883864
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 02:23:27.423555+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:32.047360
License: Public Domain

HUSPENI, Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s decision in the first issue, would reverse the trial court, and would not reach the second issue.
While I agree that Myers, Eisenschenck and Under each involved an underinsured vehicle, not an uninsured one, and that underinsured coverage was not mandated by statute in 1983,1 find these to be insuf*563ficient bases upon which to distinguish that trilogy of cases from the present one. In Myers, Eisenschenck and Linder, exclusionary clauses were upheld, thereby prohibiting a plaintiff from “convertpng] underinsured motorist (first party) coverage into liability (third party) coverage.” DeVille at 577. The majority reasons that such impermissible conversion is “virtually impossible in a one-car accident involving an uninsured vehicle because the injured party will never be able to collect both liability coverage and uninsured motorist coverage and will never be able to collect both as a third party and as a first party.” I submit that to the extent the respondent benefits from that analysis, the analysis is flawed.
Respondent elected to carry liability and uninsured motorist coverages on two of his three vehicles. The vehicle involved in the accident was uninsured. That vehicle now becomes for respondent the “uninsured” vehicle upon which he bases his claim for uninsured motorist coverage. Under the facts of this case, the individual deemed to be an “insured” under the policy is indistinguishable from the individual designated as “uninsured.” This, I submit, is perhaps a more egregious situation than that which was condemned in Myers, Eisenschenck and Linder, where at least a nominal amount of liability coverage had been purchased, and the insured sought to convert his underinsured motorist coverage to liability coverage only after exhaustion of that purchased liability coverage.
Finally, the majority cites Nygaard in rejecting appellant’s argument that “if the exclusion in this case is held invalid, multiple car families will be encouraged to insure only one car.” The Nygaard court observed:
The argument can be made that a family owning two motor vehicles should not be permitted to pay for insurance on only one and recover benefits for injuries sustained while operating the other. (Citations omitted). However, the uninsured motorist statute contains no provisions withholding protection for an insured for owning one vehicle which is not insured. Rather, the purpose of our statute is to provide the insured with financial protection against uninsured motorists whose negligence results in personal injury to him.
Nygaard, 301 Minn. 18-19, 221 N.W.2d 156 (emphasis added).
I submit that the Nygaard court envisioned two participants in an accident; an insured who neglected to insure one of his vehicles and an uninsured tortfeasor against whom the insured sought protection through his uninsured motorist coverage. Those two participants merge into one in this case and the Nygaard rationale is inapplicable. Under the majority holding, were it not for recent statutory amendments cited by the majority, we could expect that multiple car families would, indeed, decide to insure fewer than all their vehicles.