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American Economy Insurance Compay v. Bogdahn2/10/2004
ision is to protect the insured from the effects of personal injury sustained in an accident with another motorist who either carries no insurance or has inadequate coverage. In a policy issued to a corporation, the UM endorsement would provide coverage for occupants whose injuries were sustained while they were in an insured vehicle.
Dubious as I am that extant Tenth-Circuit jurisprudence will allow today's broad reformulation of the question posed for our answer, I would assume the correctness of the trial judge's conclusion - that the policy is not facially ambiguous - and would view the certification not as a license to search once again for facial policy ambiguities but rather as calling for our response to whether the shareholder's son may stand in the status of an insured.
III. SUMMARY
Tenth-Circuit jurisprudence commands that our answers be confined within the range of questions posed. It is not this court's office to intrude (by its responses) upon the certifying court's decision-making process. The question certified to us does not allow this court's re-examination of the federal trial judge's legal conclusion that, when measured by the norms of state law, the policy's provisions are facially unambiguous. Today's reploughing of the field that was earlier visited by the Western District in its own search for ambiguities - absent a direct or oblique invitation to do so - is but an unwarranted assumption of reviewing power neither encompassed in the certification order's text nor tolerated by Tenth-Circuit jurisprudence.
In answer to the question certified I would hence assume that the policy is facially unambiguous (as the federal trial judge had concluded) and, upon a four-corners examination of the contract, declare that Oklahoma law will not allow the shareholder's resident family member to stand in the status of an insured under the terms of the UM endorsement in a policy issued to a corporation.
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