 |
 |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|
|
|
|
Derosier v. Pawtucket Mutual Insurance Co.1/31/2003
of claimants. Thus, to determine whether plaintiff is underinsured, we must compare the $60,000 limit in the tortfeasor's policy to "the limits of uninsured motorists coverage applicable to any injured party legally entitled to recover damages under said uninsured motorist coverage." Id. (emphasis added). Under the Pawtucket policy, the maximum limit of liability for UM/UIM coverage is $50,000 for any one person in any one accident and $100,000 for more than one person in any one accident. The policy expressly states that the $100,000 per accident limit is subject to the $50,000 per person limit. Further, the policy states that the maximum limit is the most that will be paid regardless of the number of insureds, claims, or vehicles involved in the accident.
. Plaintiff is the only claimant covered under the Pawtucket policy. He is the only "injured party legally entitled to recover damages" under that policy's uninsured motorist coverage. The "limits of uninsured motorists coverage applicable" to plaintiff under the policy is $50,000. Therefore, 23 V.S.A. § 941(f) requires us to compare the $60,000 personal injury liability limit in the tortfeasor's policy to the $50,000 limit of UM/UIM coverage applicable to plaintiff in the Pawtucket policy. Doing so demonstrates that the tortfeasor was not underinsured at the time of the accident, and thus plaintiff is not entitled to UIM coverage under the Pawtucket policy. Accordingly, plaintiff cannot recover from the uninsured motor vehicle provision of the Pawtucket policy, and the trial court erred in so ruling.
. Our holding does not require a comparison of "apples to oranges," as plaintiff suggests. Rather, it simply requires the comparison of liability limits mandated by § 941(f). Plaintiff contends that this interpretation will lead to unfair results, and yet he advances a construction of § 941(f) that would expose insurers to potential unlimited UIM liability based on the number of persons injured in an accident rather than on the terms of the applicable insurance policy or the language of the governing statute.
. As the Connecticut Supreme Court explained in Doyle v. Metro. Prop. & Cas. Ins. Co., 743 A.2d 156, 161 (Conn. 1999), the function of split-limit UIM coverage is to provide broader coverage in situations involving multiple "claimants," but such coverage cannot "convert an otherwise nonunderinsured vehicle into an underinsured vehicle." In Doyle, the tortfeasor had a $100,000 single-limit liability policy, and the insured claimant had a policy with split-limit UIM coverage of $100,000 per person and $300,000 per accident. Rejecting claims similar to those made by plaintiff here and construing a statute similar to § 941(f), the court held that the tortfeasor was not underinsured because the proper comparison was between the tortfeasor's liability limit and the per person limit of UIM coverage available to the single insured claimant. Id. at 161-62.
. Of course, in situations where multiple injured insureds covered under a single insurance policy are seeking UIM coverage, comparing per accident liability limits would be appropriate. For example, in Botting v. Allstate Ins. Co., 707 A.2d 1319 (Me. 1998), three members of a family injured in an automobile accident sought to compare the $300,000 per accident limit of their split-limit UIM policy with the tortfeasor's $100,000 single-limit policy. The court held that because all three of the insureds had been injured in the accident, the per accident limit, rather than the per person limit, of the split-limit policy had to be compared to the tortfeasor's policy to determine whether the tortfeasor was underinsured. Id. at 1321; see Day v. Allstate Ins. Co., 721 A.2
Page 1 2 3 Vermont Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Lawyers
|
| |
to fill out a simple form to connect to Personal Injury Lawyers in your area.
|
|