Court Opinion

ID: 9636685
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:39:04.637609+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:55.935192
License: Public Domain

Justice LaVECCHIA,
dissenting.
I would reverse the Appellate Division judgment. The policyholder in this matter purchased a policy of insurance that con*13tained uninsured and underinsured motorist (UM/UIM) coverage. The policy provisions setting forth that coverage are not the focal point of this dispute. There is no policy ambiguity that must be interpreted in favor of an insured’s reasonable expectations. Rather, a majority of the Court holds that the unambiguous policy language is not enforceable because the insurer, here Prudential Insurance Company, did not inform the policyholder about changes in the details of UM/UIM coverage by means of a communication that was distinct enough to be acceptable to the Court. Ante at 8-9, 875 A.2d at 861.
Although I am unable to join in the holding of the majority, in my judgment the majority is wise not to base any part of its reasoning in favor of coverage for plaintiff on the declarations pages of Thomas’s insurance policy. The Appellate Division decision below, had its reasoning stood, would have inappropriately extended the holding of Lehrhoff v. Aetna Cas. & Sur. Co., 271 N.J.Super. 340, 638 A.2d 889 (App.Div.1994). The facts here are markedly different from that matter.
This is not a case in which the declarations pages of a personal automobile insurance policy contained information that was rendered false by application of the policy’s provisions. Such were the facts in Lehrhoff where the personal automobile policy named a couple’s son as a covered person for the family’s insured vehicles, but contradictory terms of the policy operated to exclude him from coverage. Id. at 349, 638 A.2d 889. The Appellate Division below read Lehrhoff as requiring a declarations page to inform a policyholder about all nuances of coverage. However, the facts in Lehrhoff do not support such a sweeping conclusion. To the extent the Lehrhoff decision contains language that broadly describes the declarations page as “defín[ing]” a policyholder’s coverage, id. at 347, 638 A.2d 889, that language must be understood as an inapt descriptor of the purpose of the “declarations” sheet or pages of a policy.
A “declarations” sheet does not — and does not purport to— summarize an entire policy. Nor do insurance regulatory requirements require it to do so. One can search the regulations of the *14Department of Banking and Insurance in vain for an overall standard for declarations sheets. The few regulatory references to the declarations sheet disclose finely focused requirements not pertinent here.3
Declarations sheets may vary from insurer to insurer. Their common features, however, illuminate the purpose of the document. As was the case here, the declarations sheet identifies the attributes that differentiate one policyholder of the insurer from another, i.e. number of cars, age, use, coverages selected and their upper limits, from the viewpoint of the insurer and, from that vantage point, enables the policyholder to examine the premium set for the policy based on rates charged for the selections made. One need only compare a declarations sheet to the prescribed format and text requirements for the detailed Coverage Selection Form that must be mailed to an insured, with a Buyer’s Guide, in connection with both securing coverage and upon each successive renewal, to recognize the modest, yet practical expectations placed on the minimal information captured in the declarations sheet. See N.J.A.C. 11:3-15.1 to -15 App. (establishing requirements for Buyer’s Guide, Coverage Selection Form, and Automobile Insurance Consumer Bill of Rights). In respect of coverages selected, the declarations sheet is fundamentally unlike the Coverage Selection Form in informative detail. It is not an explanation of the coverage selections; it merely lists the selections and identifies their upper parameters. The policy provisions remain operative and controlling on the specifics of coverage.
It is not disputed in this record that the declarations pages referred the insured to the policy’s terms in respect of coverage limits. The declarations pages indicated that the coverages and *15limits listed were subject to the terms of the policy. This declarations sheet thus performed its task. The insured was informed accurately of the coverages she selected for her personal automobile, and their upper limits. Because the policy provisions flesh out the terms of the coverages, the insurer’s so-called “failure” to provide detañed explanations about the policy’s terms on the declarations sheet does not make the declarations misleading. To suggest that the declarations sheet can, and must, summarize detañed, operative policy terms, is unrealistic and unreasonable.
That said, I turn to my disagreement with the majority of the Court in this matter. The insured received, with her policy and in addition to the declarations pages attached to that policy, a cover letter that specifically drew her attention to a concise, understandable three-page notice in which the UM/UIM limitation was explained. That criticized communication is not faulted for containing false, deceptive, or misleading information. Indeed,, there is no suggestion in this record that the notice description of the change in the UM/UIM coverage, which Prudential provided in its supplemental material, was inadequate in any way. Ironicaüy, Prudential is faulted for including too much information in what it communicated to its insured. According to the majority, Prudential’s blame lies in telling its insured an undefined, and indefinable, “too much” at one time.
Without more — such as a claim that Prudential intentionafiy “buried” this information in an avalanche of unnecessary data— the adequacy of Prudential’s notice is not lessened simply because of the quantity of materials included in the mailing. That is particularly so when as here, the information imparted by the insurance carrier, both in its substance and in its quantity, was due to statutory changes being effectuated at that time. At bottom, the Court bases its holding on personal predüections — it imposes as the standard of measure its own favored means for highlighting the terms of the insured’s UM/UIM coverage to the insured. According to the majority, the information here was prominent, but just was not prominent enough. In the majority’s view, it was not enough that the UM/UIM information was placed in an explanatory letter accompanying the policy. The explanato*16ry notice of the change in UM/UIM coverage simply did not stand out in the large package of information mailed at one time to the insured with the policy.
That criticism is, to me, too fickle to apply reasonably. I cannot join in a holding that provides an entire industry with so little guidance as to how it must conduct its business particularly when, as here, it is required to address wholesale statutory changes affecting the policies of insureds. The community of regulated insurers — indeed, every citizen of this State — rightfully is entitled to more certainty than that.
Insurers must be able to communicate with their insureds about policy information without being subjected to the capricious preferences of a reviewing court about how a communication could have been improved. A court’s preferred approach to that communication (what words must be used to broadcast its prominence above other information that must be disclosed, or where it is located within a document or series of documents containing other information about the policy, and whether it should be separately stapled, or mailed by separate envelope) simply makes for a changeable standard not conducive as a rule of law that governs whether policy language will be enforced.
One wonders now how many materials can be mailed to an insured in one mailing before running afoul of the Court’s holding today. Are three, ten, or twenty pages permissible? Are fifty too many to include in one mailing? Does the order of placement of the documents within the envelope matter? Must individual envelopes be the only safe means of communicating information to an insured henceforth? In today’s electronic age, we should not hamstring insurers in their modes of communication with insureds by deciding this matter on arcane, and ultimately personally idiosyncratic, notions of how information is to be shared.
I must respectfully dissent. I would reverse the Appellate Division and reinstate the judgment of the trial court that awarded summary judgment to Prudential and dismissed this action.
The Chief Justice and Justice RIVERA-SOTO join in this dissent.
*17For affirmance — Justices LONG, ZAZZALI, ALBIN, and WALLACE — 4.
For reversal — Chief Justice PORITZ, and Justices LaVECCHIA, and RIVERA-SOTO — 3.

 See N.J.A.C. ll:3-19A.6(b) (requiring pertinent tier rating level used for premium calculation, when applicable, to be disclosed on declarations sheet, or in another document accompanying policy); N.J.A.C. 11:3 — 9.1(b) (mandating that when declarations sheet contains code numbers and abbreviations identifying rating information for vehicles, rating information may be supplied separately through interpretive form); N.J.A.C. 11:3-13.5(e) (requiring declarations sheet to disclose by vehicle any applicable named driver exclusion elected by insured).