Court Opinion

ID: 9851037
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:06:15.83156+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:47.595059
License: Public Domain

Hall, Presiding Judge,
dissenting. The majority opinion is the antithesis of realism. A realist court abhors technicalities and syllogistic reasoning that produce absurdities in the law; it supports Hobbes’ premise “That Law can never be against Reason.”
A majority of this court has construed the contract to mean that the plaintiff’s son is not a relative under the policy. It does this under a rule of construction that an insurance contract is construed against the insurer. This rule should never be applied to arrive at an absurdity which is obviously not the intention of the parties. Brown v. Chrysler Corp., 112 Ga. App. 22, 23 (143 SE2d 575). On the contrary, “the contract should be construed so as to carry out the true intention of the parties . . . ; and every other rule of construction of contracts, including insurance contracts, is subservient to this one. . . The ordinary and legal meaning of words employed in an insurance policy must be taken into consideration.” Public Indent. Co. of Newark v. Yeargood, 50 Ga. App. 646, 647 (179 SE 232). The Code of Georgia provides: “The cardinal rule of construction is to ascertain the intention of the parties. If that intention be clear, and it contravenes no rule of law, and sufficient words be used to arrive at the intention, it shall be enforced, irrespective of all technical or arbitrary rules of construction.” (Emphasis supplied). Code § 20-702. The Code recognizes that neither the mind nor the contract marches with the regularity of a Prussian goose step.
The terms of the exclusion read: “This policy does not apply . . . to bodily injury: (b) sustained by the named insured or a relative (1) while occupying an automobile owned by or furnished for the regular use of either the named insured or any relative, other than the automobile described herein or its replacement. . .” (Emphasis supplied). Plaintiff contends his son is not a relative as defined in Part I of the policy and incorporated by reference into Part II. This definition reads: “relative means a relative of the named insured who is a resident of the same household, provided neither such relative nor his *518spouse owns a private passenger automobile.” Plaintiff contends that his son’s undisputed ownership of an automobile removes him from the category of a relative, as the word is used in the exclusion.
While the general policy definitions are said to apply to Part II, it is obvious that the word “relative” in Exclusion (b) was not intended to mean one who does not own an automobile when the exclusion is addressing itself to “an automobile owned by . . . any relative.” To hold that the general definition prevails makes nonsense of the specific provision. At the same time, it is obvious that the word is not intended to mean only kinship, and thereby to bar recovery where the insured was injured in an automobile owned by any relative, however remote in consanguinity or residence.
For legitimate, actuarial reasons, the drafters were trying to exclude coverage of an unlisted automobile owned by a related member of the same household. I would reverse the grant of summary judgment for the plaintiff.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Judge Jordan and Judge Eberhardt concur in this dissent.