Court Opinion

ID: 9739033
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:07:38.965735+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:09.714397
License: Public Domain

COYNE, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. I read neither Minn.Stat. § 65B.49, subd. 3a (1988) nor our decision in Hanson v. American Family Mut. Ins. Co., 417 N.W.2d 94 (Minn.1987), as excluding bodily injury sustained by a motorcyclist from the underinsured motorist coverage afforded by a plan of reparation security insuring an automobile as punishment for the motorcyclist’s failure to procure liability insurance on the motorcycle. Both statute and decision, it seems to me, are intended to preclude the transfer of uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage provided in a plan of reparation security from the vehicle de*834scribed in that plan to an owned vehicle— regardless whether it has four or fewer than four wheels — which is not described in a plan of reparation security affording uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage.
Like the present case, Hanson v. American Family Mut. Ins. Co., came to this court as a question certified by the United States District Court, District of Minnesota. In that case we answered in the affirmative the question — does Minn.Stat. § 65B.49, subd. 3a(7) (1986), preclude uninsured coverage when the injured claimant is riding an uninsured motorcycle at the time of the injury?— a question almost identical to the first question posed here. In so doing we recognized that the 1985 amendments governing uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, Act of June 27,1985, ch. 10, § 68,1985 Minn. Laws 1840-42, codified as amended at Minn.Stat. § 65B.49, subd. 3a, had overridden the principle adopted in Nygaard v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 301 Minn. 10, 221 N.W.2d 151 (1974), that uninsured motorist coverage followed the person and not the vehicle. Because the no-fault act “placefd] no geographical limits on coverage and [did] not purport to tie protection against uninsured motorists to occupancy of the insured vehicle,” in Nygaard and its progeny the court had invalidated policy language designed to exclude from coverage claims for injuries sustained while the insured person occupied an owned but uninsured vehicle. Id. at 19, 221 N.W.2d at 156.
In Hanson, however, we recognized both the broad policy decision reflected in the 1985 amendments to tie uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage to the particular vehicle involved in the accident and the legislative expectation that the imposition of geographical limitations and the elimination of stacking of coverages would stem rising insurance costs, which the legislature attributed in part to “prior law requiring expansive interpretation of vehicle insurance coverage.” Hanson, 417 N.W.2d at 96. See also Hearing on H.F. 345, Senate Committee on Economic Development and Commerce, 74th Minn.Leg., Apr. 16, 1985 (audio tape) (comments of Senator Petty, senate sponsor of the 1985 amendments).
Noting that “[ajllowing a claimant to extend uninsured motorist coverage from an automobile to an owned but uninsured motorcycle runs counter to the thrust of the 1985 legislation,” we held in Hanson that “Minn.Stat. § 65B.49, subd. 3a(7), precludes uninsured motorist coverage when the claimant at the time of the injury is riding an uninsured motorcycle he or she owns.” Hanson, 417 N.W.2d at 96.
Our decision in Hanson comports not only with the 1985 amendments to the no-fault act, but also with the original legislative treatment of motorcycles in connection with the no-fault act. In February of 1973 when the Minnesota no-fault automobile insurance act was before the legislature, there was a good deal of discussion about the application of the no-fault act to motorcycles. For the most part the discussion revolved around the extremely high cost of first party coverages for a motorcyclist, who usually sustains injury and oftentimes serious injury in any accident involving the motorcycle. The dilemma prompted Senator Jack Davies, one of the chief proponents of the no-fault act, to suggest to the joint conference committee inclusion of a reallocation provision which would provide basic economic loss benefits for a motorcyclist injured in a collision with an automobile by imposing liability for only one-half of those benefits on the insurer of the motorcycle and liability for the other one-half of those benefits on the automobile insurer. That proposal elicited the following response from one of the conferees:
What you’re saying is that the motorcyclist only has to take out liability coverage, which they can get at a reasonable rate at the present time, and which I’m in agreement with, but you’re also saying that if they have an accident, and normally it’s with another automobile, that they’re also going to pick up the first party benefits that the automobile driver pays premiums for and which they do not pay premiums for. What you’re really doing is giving them all the benefits of *835the no-fault bill and they re not paying the premium that the automobile driver has to pay for the same coverage.
Hearing on S.F. 96, Joint Conference Committee Hearing, 73rd Minn.Leg., Feb. 18, 1974 (audio tape).
The Minnesota Automobile Liability Commission, created by the legislature in 1971, considered it obvious from the unfavorable loss statistics involving motorcycles that premium rates would be high and that availability might be restricted, encouraging operation of motorcycles without insurance. Minnesota Automobile Liability Study Commission, Report to the 1973 Legislature, at 86 (1973). Citing the limited availability and high cost of first party benefits for motorcyclists — of the four leading automobile insurance carriers in Minnesota, only one even offered medical payments coverage and that coverage had maximum limits of $500, with a $100 deductible, at an annual premium of $136 — a representative of the Minnesota Motorcycle Dealers’ Association said that every state that had enacted no-fault automobile insurance legislation had, with one exception (where premiums had risen to a minimum of $900 per year) excluded motorcyclists from its purview. Hearing on S.F. 96, Senate Subcommittee on Commerce and Insurance, 73rd MinmLeg., April 9, 1973 (audio tape) and Minnesota Automobile Liability Study supra, at 86 (comments of Gordon Nesvig). While recognizing that the frequent and severe injuries to motorcyclists indicate a need for reparation, the National Association of Independent Insurers, in its statement to the Commission, suggested that the unusual characteristics of motorcycles make first party benefits less important in the case of motorcycles than in the case of automobiles:
(Motorcyclists) have recognized the extraordinary hazard involved in motorcycle riding and are willing to assume the risk themselves, much as other sports participants do. Moreover, the passenger hazard has not been as much a factor in motorcycle operation as it is in the operation of automobiles and there has been, therefore, less incentive for a motorcyclist to purchase medical payments coverage to protect passengers than there is for the owner of an automo- » bile.
Minnesota Automobile Liability Study, supra, at 87.
Ultimately, the motorcyclists prevailed. The Minnesota no-fault automobile insurance act adopted as Laws 1974 ch. 408, § 8, made liability insurance covering the maintenance and use of motorcycles compulsory, Minn.Stat. § 65B.48, subd. 5 (1988), but otherwise exempted motorcyclists from its provisions, an exemption which remains unchanged in the no-fault act as it exists today. It is true, of course, that in Hanson the motorcyclist had failed to procure the mandated liability insurance while here there was compliance with the statutory requirement. It is equally true, however, that the absence of statutory mandate does not preclude the inclusion of uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage in the motorcycle liability insurance policy or any other first party coverage. That was the result of an election on the part of plaintiff’s decedent — just as the exemption of motorcyclists from all the first party coverages required by the no-fault act was the result of an election by the motorcycling public. To say, as does the majority, that the applicability of section 65B.49, subd. 3a(7) turns on whether the motorcyclist carries a policy of liability insurance is to convert subdivision 3a(7) into a penal statute.
More importantly, whether the owner or operator of a motorcycle is insured or uninsured with respect to liability arising out of the ownership, maintenance or use of the motorcycle is absolutely immaterial to the construction or application of subdivision 3a of section 65B.49. That subdivision addresses uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage only. The requirement in section 65B.49, subd. 3a(7) that an owned vehicle be an insured vehicle in order for the owner to claim uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage serves none of the purposes of the 1985 amendments unless the occupied vehicle is insured with respect to uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage. If, despite the extreme vulnerability *836of motorcyclists to injury in the event of accident, motorcyclists are exempted from the obligation to carry uninsured and underinsured motorist coverages because the cost is prohibitive, allowing a claimant to extend uninsured motorist coverage from an automobile to an owned motorcycle uninsured with respect to uninsured and underinsured motorist coverages can hardly be said to advance the legislative intention to stem rising insurance costs. Accordingly, I would answer the first certified question in the affirmative.
The majority responds negatively to the second certified question — under Minn. Stat. § 65B.49, subd. 3a(5), when a person is injured while occupying his own motorcycle which is insured for liability coverage only, is he considered to be “occupying a motor vehicle” for purposes of claims to underinsured motorist benefits? If, as we held in Hanson, a motorcyclist is “occupying a motor vehicle” within the meaning of Minn.Stat. § 65B.49, subd. 3a(7) (1988), I fail to see how that same motorcyclist “is not occupying a motor vehicle” within the meaning of Minn.Stat. § 65B.49, subd. 3a(5) (1988). Therefore, I would answer the second certified question in the affirmative.
Finally, for the reasons which prompt me to conclude that a motorcyclist may not look to the underinsured motorist coverage afforded under his automobile plan of reparation security as the source of underin-sured motorist coverage for injuries sustained while the cyclist is occupying his or her own motorcycle, I would answer the third certified question in the affirmative. In my judgment an insurance policy exclusion which provides that underinsured motorist coverage does not apply to bodily injury sustained by a person “while occupying a motor vehicle owned by you or a relative for which insurance is not afforded under this part, or when struck by the motor vehicle” is consonant with the public policy underlying the 1985 amendments of the no-fault act and is, therefore, enforceable.