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Healey v. Allstate Insurance Co.3/8/1988
Defendant Travelers Insurance Company (Travelers) and plaintiff Robert R. Healey appeal from Law Division orders determining that Personal Injury Protection (PIP) benefits were awardable to plaintiff under a Travelers' auto insurance policy and that defendant Allstate Insurance Company's (Allstate) benefits were not available. Travelers has appealed from the order of liability, and plaintiff has apparently cross-appealed solely from the order relieving Allstate from responsibility.
The facts in this case are relatively simple. Plaintiff, a resident of Texas, rented a car insured by Travelers at Newark Airport to attend a family party. The named insured on the Travelers' policy was National Car Rental, a corporation. After becoming intoxicated at the party, plaintiff left the car parked in a parking lot and was walking when he was struck by a car insured by defendant Allstate. It was represented, however, that the Allstate-insured vehicle was owned, principally garaged and operated by a driver domiciled in the State of New York who was merely passing through New Jersey at the time.
The Travelers' policy substantially conformed to N.J.S.A. 39:6A-4. In pertinent part, the statute reads:
Every automobile liability insurance policy insuring an automobile as defined in this act against loss resulting from liability imposed by law for bodily injury, death and property damage sustained by any person arising out of ownership, operation, maintenance or use of an automobile shall provide personal injury protection coverage. . . . to the named insured and members of his family residing in his household who sustained bodily injury . . . as a pedestrian, being struck by an automobile or by an object propelled by or from an automobile. . . .
The relevant section of the policy reads:
' ligible injured person' means
(a) the named insured or any relative of the named insured, if the named insured or relative sustains bodily injury
(2) while a pedestrian, as a result of being struck by a private passenger automobile or by an object propelled by or from a private passenger automobile.
The statute defines "named insured" as
the person or persons identified as the insured in the policy and, if an individual his or her spouse. . . . [ N.J.S.A. 39:6A-2(g)].
The trial judge determined that since the "named insured" on the Travelers' policy was a corporation engaged in renting vehicles, and since the corporation could not be personally injured nor could it have family members who are injured, the listing of the vehicle's corporate owner in the policy somehow perpetrated a fraud against its leasing customers. The judge found that in order to classify National Car Rental as the
only named insured where their business is the leasing of cars almost becomes ludicrous. That's their business, and for them to be able to withdraw the benefits of the policies as dictated by statute by the mere mentioning of a corporate named insured which then means nobody else can recover as a named insured under that policy subverts the entire intent of the no fault legislation.
The judge further opined that plaintiff should not be penalized for doing that which he should have done under the circumstances, namely walk when he was unfit to drive. Despite the language of the statute and the policy, the court stated it would extend coverage to plaintiff as a named insured.
In some respects plaintiff was an insured under the policy. He was afforded liability coverage and had limited PIP benefits un
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