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State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. v. Naomi Luebbers6/14/2005
v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., 2002-NMCA-073, 9, 132 N.M. 470, 50 P.3d 565, demonstrate an implicit statutory requirement that coverage depends on bodily injury to an insured. Neither of these cases addresses the question whether bodily injury must be to an insured. Instead, they focus on whether a loss of consortium claim can qualify as a separate bodily injury for policy limit purposes.
Plaintiff in Gonzales sought a declaration that her loss of consortium claim should be considered a separate bodily injury which would bring her claim within the higher "each accident" policy limits rather than providing her with only a single "each person" limit. Gonzales 122 N.M. at 140, 921 P.2d at 947. The Supreme Court held that though Gonzales had a separate cause of action based on her loss of consortium, she was bound to the terms of the insurance policy under which "the relevant contingency [for policy limits purposes] is the number of people who suffered bodily injury." Id. The Court emphasized that loss of consortium is not a bodily injury. Id. Gonzales also argued that denying her a separate source of recovery contravened the public policy of the uninsured motorist statute mandating coverage whenever the insured is "legally entitled to recover damages." Id. at 142, 921 P.2d at 949 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court held that the insurance policy did not violate the statute since it did not wholly preclude coverage for loss of consortium, but merely limited its liability by treating the claim as part of the damages arising from bodily injury to another. Id. at 143, 921 P.2d at 950. Gonzales simply did not address the question whether an insured must suffer bodily injury to trigger coverage at all.
State Farm also uses Gonzales to emphasize that its policy has been approved by the Superintendent of Insurance indicating that the Superintendent agrees with its interpretation of the Act. Id. at 142, 921 P.2d at 949. The Superintendent's approval does favor State Farm's position. However, our case law makes clear that New Mexico courts are not bound by agency interpretations and may substitute their own independent judgment "because it is the function of the courts to interpret the law." Morningstar Water Users Ass'n v. N.M. Pub. Util. Comm'n, 20 N.M. 579, 583, 904 P.2d 28, 32 (1995). This is one of those occasions where we find the agency interpretation of the law to be incorrect.
Wiard does not address the issue directly either. Wiard addressed whether a father could make a claim for loss of consortium under his uninsured policy above and beyond the policy limits paid by the tortfeasor for the wrongful death of the insured's daughters. 2002-NMCA-073, 1. We held he could not because his damages were subsumed in the wrongful death payment. Id. 10. The tortfeasor's payment exceeded the uninsured policy limit and offset any uninsured motorist claim flowing from the daughters' deaths. Id. 14. Wiard did not address whether the father could have pursued a claim for uninsured coverage if his daughters had not been insureds under his policy.
The issue here boils down to whether the insurance policy trigger requirement of bodily injury to an insured, which necessarily excludes Brian Jr.'s loss of consortium claim, unreasonably diminishes the statutorily mandated coverage. As noted earlier, Section 66-5-301 is silent on the issue. However, our case law tells us that "the only limitations on protection are those specifically set out in the statute itself: that the insured be legally entitled to recover damages and that the negligent driver be uninsured." Schmick, 103 N.M. at 219, 704 P.2d at 1095. Only where the exclusions can be construed to be wi
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