Gonzales v. Millers Cas. Ins. Co. of Texas

• Decision Date: 23 January 1991
• Docket Number: No. 87-2189,87-2189
• Citation: 923 F.2d 1417
• Parties: Claro GONZALES and Tomasa R. Gonzales, by personal representative, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. MILLERS CASUALTY INSURANCE COMPANY OF TEXAS, a Delaware corporation, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

Page 1417

923 F.2d 1417

Claro GONZALES and Tomasa R. Gonzales, by personal representative, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. MILLERS CASUALTY INSURANCE COMPANY OF TEXAS, a Delaware corporation, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 87-2189.

United States Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit.

Jan. 23, 1991.

Shane A. English (John E. Keithly, Anthony, N.M., on the brief), for plaintiffs-appellees.

Michael J. Condon, Rodey, Dickason, Sloan, Akin & Robb, P.A., Albuquerque, N.M., for defendant-appellant.

Before HOLLOWAY, Chief Judge, BARRETT and LOGAN, Circuit Judges.

HOLLOWAY, Chief Judge.

Plaintiffs-appellees, Claro Gonzales and the Estate of his deceased wife Tomasa Gonzales, brought this action against Millers Casualty Insurance Company of Texas (Millers) seeking a declaration that they were entitled to underinsured motorist coverage under a Millers automobile insurance policy issued to Claro Gonzales. The district court granted summary judgment on the coverage issue to plaintiffs-appellees in an unpublished Memorandum Opinion and Order and Millers filed a timely appeal. For the reasons stated below, we affirm.

I

The claim of plaintiffs-appellees for underinsured motorist benefits arises from a head-on collision in Luna County, New Mexico, between an automobile driven by Claro Gonzales and one driven by Michael Woehrl. There were three passengers in the Gonzales vehicle: Tomasa Gonzales, Angelina Gonzales, and Christina Miranda. As a result of the collision, Tomasa Gonzales died, and Claro Gonzales and the two other occupants of the vehicle were injured. The district court's opinion says that Woehrl's negligence was the proximate cause of the accident, and this is undisputed.

At the time of the accident the vehicle driven by Claro Gonzales was insured by Millers. Generally, under the Millers policy, Claro and Tomasa Gonzales were each insured for $75,000 against bodily injury or death caused by an underinsured motorist. ¹ Woehrl had automobile liability coverage with Mountain States Mutual Casualty Company (Mountain States) totalling $100,000 per occurrence.

Mountain States disbursed the $100,000 proceeds of Woehrl's liability coverage evenly among Claro Gonzales, the Estate of Tomasa Gonzales, and the two other occupants of the vehicle, receiving releases of their claims against Woehrl. The four thus received $25,000 apiece from Mountain States. Alleging damages in excess of $25,000, plaintiffs-appellees sought compensation under the underinsured motorist provisions of the Millers policy. Millers denied further liability under these policy provisions.

Plaintiffs-appellees commenced this declaratory judgment action against Millers in the District Court for Grant County, New Mexico. Millers removed the action to the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico, where jurisdiction was founded on diversity of citizenship. Plaintiffs-appellees and Millers both moved for summary judgment on the underinsured motorist coverage question. In particular, the parties contested whether Woehrl was an underinsured motorist under New Mexico law. ²

The district court ruled in favor of plaintiffs-appellees on the summary judgment issues now before us. Generally the court concluded that where there are multiple claimants to the proceeds of a tortfeasor's liability coverage as here, in determining whether the tortfeasor is an underinsured motorist the court must look to the liability proceeds actually available to the injured insureds, not merely the express policy limits of the tortfeasor's liability coverage.

Thus the district court's construction of New Mexico law held Woehrl an underinsured motorist. The court had previously found that the liability coverage available to Claro Gonzales and the Estate of Tomasa Gonzales under Woehrl's insurance ($25,000 apiece) was less than their respective underinsured motorist coverage ($75,000 apiece). The district court's ruling permitted plaintiffs-appellees to look to Millers to compensate them under the underinsured motorist policy provisions for any additional loss, subject to the coverage limits. ³

II

We review summary judgment determinations de novo, applying the same legal standard as the district court. E.g., Osgood v. State Farm Mutual Auto. Ins. Co., 848 F.2d 141, 143 (10th Cir.1988). Summary judgment is appropriate when "the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c); see Mustang Fuel Corp. v. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co., 561 F.2d 202, 204 (10th Cir.1977). When the moving party has carried its initial burden of alerting the court to the purported absence of a genuine issue for trial, the opposing party may not rest on the averments or denials of its pleadings but, rather, must establish specific triable issues of fact to avoid summary judgment. See Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 323-24, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 2552-53, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986); Lake Nacimiento Ranch Co. v. San Luis Obispo County, 841 F.2d 872, 875-76 (9th Cir.1987), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 827, 109 S.Ct. 79, 102 L.Ed.2d 55 (1988).

Here there is no argument that summary judgment was procedurally incorrect due to the presence of a genuine issue as to a material fact. Instead, Millers challenges only the legal determination that the plaintiffs Claro and Tomasa Gonzales are entitled to further recovery on their underinsured motorist claim.

III

At the heart of this case is the definition of the term "underinsured motorist" under New Mexico law. The relevant statute provides:

"underinsured motorist" means an operator of a motor vehicle with respect to the ownership, maintenance or use of which the sum of the limits of liability under all bodily injury liability insurance applicable at the time of the accident is less than the limits of liability under the insured's uninsured [/underinsured] motorist coverage.

N.M.Stat.Ann. Sec. 66-5-301(B). ⁴ The district court commenced its analysis of the coverage issue with the language of the statute. It found Sec. 66-5-301(B) to be "potentially ambiguous" as to whether in the multiple claimant context the measure of the tortfeasor's liability coverage--that is, "the sum of the limits of ... liability insurance applicable at the time of the accident"--was the amount of the liability proceeds actually available to an injured insured, or the express policy limits of the tortfeasor's liability coverage.

The court turned for guidance to the objectives underlying Sec. 66-5-301(B) and noted that the statute was designed to compensate victims of inadequately insured motorists, and more specifically, to put the injured insured in the same position the insured would have occupied had the tortfeasor had liability coverage equal to the insured's underinsured motorist coverage. According to the district court, in practical terms these objectives of Sec. 66-5-301(B) were furthered in the multiple claimant context by construing the statute so that the measure of liability coverage for purposes of the underinsured motorist determination was the amount of liability proceeds actually available to an injured insured.

Rejecting this construction, said the court, would mean that the Gonzales plaintiffs would have been better off if Woehrl had possessed no liability insurance at all--a result that could not be accepted as logical. ⁵ Accordingly, purporting to read the language of the statute with reference to the objectives sought to be achieved, the district court concluded that, as to Claro and Tomasa Gonzales, Woehrl was an underinsured motorist.

The question resolved by the district court relative to underinsured motorist coverage in the multiple claimant context is a question of first impression in New Mexico. The New Mexico courts have not spoken authoritatively on the subject. ⁶ Generally, we must accord at least some deference to the district court's construction of the substantive law of the state in which it sits. ⁷ See American Coleman Co. v. Intrawest Bank of Southglenn, 887 F.2d 1382, 1385 (10th Cir.1989); Corbitt v. Andersen, 778 F.2d 1471, 1475 (10th Cir.1985).

Upon careful consideration, we conclude that the district court's reading (or, more specifically, prediction) of New Mexico law on the underinsured motorist question is correct, and its summary judgment determination should be upheld. There is no majority view evident in the case law construing similar state statutes. ⁸ The district court's reading of New Mexico law, however, finds support in a respectable body of authority. ⁹

For example, in Butler v. MFA Mutual Ins. Co., 356 So.2d 1129 (La.Ct.App.1978), the Louisiana Court of Appeals found uninsured motorist coverage to exist in a multiple claimant situation where the amount of the tortfeasors' liability coverage actually available to the injured insured (as opposed to the face value of the coverage) was less than the limits of the insured's uninsured motorist coverage. ¹⁰ The court held that the statute at issue "should be construed to mean the effective liability coverage," rather than the liability coverage appearing on the face of the tortfeasor's policy. Butler, 356 So.2d at 1133 (emphasis in original).

Also, in Knudson v. Grange Mutual Companies, 31 Ohio App.3d 20, 507 N.E.2d 1155 (1986), the court noted that the statutory requirement that insurance companies offer underinsured motorist coverage grew out of legislators' desire to avoid a situation where injured insureds would be better off if they were harmed by a motorist with no insurance coverage at all, than one with some coverage. 507 N.E.2d at 1157. Like the district court in the case at bar, the Knudson court concluded that adopting a view in multiple claimant situations that focused on the stated policy limits of a tortfeasor's liability coverage, rather than the liability...