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Thompson v. Estate of Pannell8/15/2001
nsured may not elect limits lower than the amounts prescribed to meet the requirements of ORS 806.070 for bodily injury or death." (Emphasis added.) See also ORS 742.447 (requiring an insurer issuing motor vehicle insurance to "issue with the policy" a card showing the effective dates of the insurance) (emphasis added).
By their terms, the quoted provisions demonstrate that insurance maintained by a self-insurer pursuant to a certificate of self-insurance is not a "motor vehicle liability insurance policy" within the meaning of the latter statutory phrase. See State v. Guzek, 322 Or 245, 265, 906 P2d 272 (1995) (when the legislature uses different terms in related statutes, court presumes that the legislature intended different meanings; citing PGE, 317 Or at 611). Accordingly, requirements for a "motor vehicle liability insurance policy" set out in ORS chapters 806 and 742 apply to self-insurance only to the extent that those requirements are made applicable to self-insurance by operation of ORS 806.130 or another statute setting out requirements for self-insurance. See Farmers Ins. Co. v. Snappy Car Rental, Inc., 128 Or App 516, 520-21, 876 P2d 833, rev den 319 Or 625 (1994) (in the context of determining whether a self-insured car rental agency was required under ORS 806.080 to provide coverage to a person who rented a vehicle from the car rental agency, the court noted different methods of compliance with the Financial Responsibility Law set out in ORS 806.060, noted that neither ORS 806.080 nor ORS 806.130 makes any reference to the other, and concluded that ORS 806.080 imposes no obligations on self-insurers). ORS 806.130(3) requires a self-insurer subject to that provision to provide "uninsured motorist coverage and liability coverage to at least the limits set out in ORS 806.070." That limit is $25,000.
We therefore need not decide whether defendant is a "person" within the meaning of ORS chapter 806; whether any of the exemptions from the Insurance Code provided in ORS 731.036 applies to defendant under the circumstances at issue here; or whether plaintiff is an insured under defendant's self-insurance or its excess liability insurance policy. Even assuming that we might reach conclusions favorable to plaintiff in regard to any or all of those issues, plaintiff would not be entitled to any UM benefits under defendant's self-insurance, because she had already recovered an amount of UM benefits in excess of $25,000 from her own insurer. The trial court did not err in granting defendant's motion for judgment on the pleadings as to plaintiff's claim for a declaration that she was entitled to UM coverage under defendant's self-insurance.
We turn to plaintiff's second assignment of error, in which she asserts that the trial court erred in granting defendant's motion for summary judgment as to her claim for breach of an implied contract of insurance coverage for school volunteers. The trial court concluded that, even in the light most favorable to plaintiff and even assuming that the injury to plaintiff occurred "on site" within the meaning of that phrase in defendant's "Guidebook for Volunteers," the only evidence in the record was that, after defendant's policy of accidental medical and dental insurance for volunteers expired in 1992, defendant "intended to continue on a self-insured basis" the same coverage amount, namely, $5,000. The trial court therefore granted defendant's motion for summary judgment on the condition that judgment in that amount be entered in plaintiff's favor.
In this court, plaintiff again asserts that defendant represented in its "Guidebook for Volunteers" that volunteers were covered by accidental medical and dental insurance and that the guid
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