Allstate Ins. Co. v. Morgan, 6237

• Decision Date: 28 February 1978
• Docket Number: No. 6237,6237
• Citation: 59 Haw. 44,575 P.2d 477
• Parties: ALLSTATE INSURANCE COMPANY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Lindarae L. MORGAN, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: Hawaii Supreme Court

Page 477

575 P.2d 477

59 Haw. 44

ALLSTATE INSURANCE COMPANY, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Lindarae L. MORGAN, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 6237.

Supreme Court of Hawai'i.

Feb. 28, 1978.

Syllabus by the Court

1. Under HRS §§ 431-448 and 287-7, an insurer is required to provide a minimum of $10,000 in per person uninsured motorist insurance benefits for each vehicle insured under a single liability insurance policy.

2. In view of the requirements of HRS §§ 431-448 and 287-7, when an insured under a single multi-vehicle liability policy is injured by an uninsured motorist while the insured is not in a vehicle insured under the policy, the insured is entitled to recover the statutorily provided minimum in uninsured motorist benefits applicable to each and every vehicle insured under the policy.

Kenneth S. Robbins, Honolulu (Stephen H. Brandt and Harold Chu, Honolulu, with him on the briefs), for plaintiff-appellant.

Myer C. Symonds, Honolulu (Bouslog & Symonds, Honolulu, of counsel), for defendant-appellee.

Before RICHARDSON, C. J., and KOBAYASHI, OGATA, MENOR and KIDWELL, JJ.

OGATA, Justice.

This is an appeal from a declaratory judgment action brought by Allstate Insurance Company (hereinafter Allstate) seeking a determination of the limits of uninsured motorist coverage under an automobile insurance policy issued by Allstate to Donald Morgan. We are here faced with a situation in which three automobiles were insured under a single liability policy, but the insured was injured while operating a fourth, independently owned and insured motor vehicle which was struck by an uninsured motorist.

The precise question presented is whether the insured is limited under the single three-automobile liability policy to recover the uninsured motorist coverage on only one of the insured automobiles or is instead entitled to recover the uninsured motorist coverage on all three of the automobiles insured under the policy.

The court below granted summary judgment in favor of appellee Lindarae L. Morgan, thereby entitling her to recover up to $10,000 for each of the three vehicles insured under the policy, or a total maximum recovery of $30,000. ¹ Allstate appeals from the Order Granting Motion for Summary Judgment. We concur in the result reached by the court below, but for substantially different reasons.

On October 20, 1973, Lindarae L. Morgan was operating a motor vehicle owned by Stanley Jumawan. The Jumawan vehicle was struck by an automobile owned and operated by Andre Patricio, and Lindarae Morgan was injured in the collision. Andre Patricio's automobile was uninsured at the time of the accident. ²

On the day of the accident, there was in effect an Allstate "Crusader" automobile insurance policy issued to Donald Morgan, who is the father of Lindarae Morgan. The policy provided coverage for three automobiles owned by Donald Morgan, and Morgan paid separate insurance premiums for each of the three cars. None of Morgan's three insured automobiles were involved in the October 20, 1973, accident.

Because Lindarae Morgan was actually residing in her father's household at the time of the accident, she qualifies as an insured under the uninsured motorist provisions of the Allstate insurance policy issued to her father. In September of 1975, Lindarae Morgan filed a demand for arbitration, claiming that $30,000 in uninsured motorist coverage was available to her under the Allstate policy issued to her father. The parties subsequently agreed to waive arbitration and to submit the matter for judicial determination. Allstate thereupon filed its complaint for declaratory relief.

In granting summary judgment in favor of appellee Lindarae Morgan, the court below determined that the terms of the Allstate insurance policy should be construed to permit "stacking" of the uninsured motorist coverage, thereby allowing Lindarae Morgan to recover $10,000 for each vehicle insured under the policy. The court found that when the "limits of liability clause" and the so-called "separability clause" contained in the policy were read in conjunction with each other, an ambiguity in interpretation resulted. ³ The court determined that the separability clause provided separate coverage under the policy for each insured vehicle up to the applicable limit of liability, or $10,000 per person per insured vehicle. However, because none of the vehicles insured under the policy were involved in the accident, the effect of the separability clause upon the limit of liability clause was deemed to be ambiguous. The court below construed the ambiguity in favor of the insured, and it found that the insured was not confined to a recovery of only the stated limit for a single insured vehicle, but instead could "stack" the coverage on all three vehicles insured under the policy and recover a maximum of $30,000. ⁴

Our analysis of this controversy is considerably simpler than that undertaken by the court below. We need only look to the Hawaii uninsured motorist insurance statute, HRS § 431-448, to find that the court below reached the proper result in affording appellee a maximum uninsured motorist insurance recovery of $30,000 from Allstate.

The nature of uninsured motorist insurance is such that an insured is covered whether or not he or she is injured while in a vehicle which is insured under the policy. The Allstate policy here is consistent with that customary definition of uninsured motorist coverage. ⁵ Therefore, as an insured under the terms of her father's policy, Lindarae Morgan was entitled to recover uninsured motorist insurance benefits from Allstate even though she was injured while operating a vehicle not covered by the policy. The key determination thus becomes the maximum amount of uninsured motorist insurance to which she is entitled.

Our uninsured motorist insurance statute, HRS § 431-448, provides that no policy of automobile or motor vehicle liability insurance shall be issued in this state "with respect to any motor vehicle" unless uninsured motorist insurance protection is concurrently made available in the policy or supplemental thereto. ⁶ We are of the opinion that the phrase "with respect to any motor vehicle" indicates that separate uninsured motorist coverage in at least the minimum statutorily required amounts must be provided for each automobile insured under a policy of liability insurance. Therefore, when two or more motor vehicles are insured under a single liability insurance policy,...