Smith v. Metropolitan Property & Liability Ins. Co.

• Decision Date: 23 January 1980
• Docket Number: Civ. No. B-78-381.
• Citation: 483 F. Supp. 673
• Parties: Earl G. SMITH, Administrator of the Estate of Gary Dean Smith, Deceased, v. METROPOLITAN PROPERTY AND LIABILITY INSURANCE COMPANY.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Connecticut

483 F. Supp. 673

Earl G. SMITH, Administrator of the Estate of Gary Dean Smith, Deceased, v. METROPOLITAN PROPERTY AND LIABILITY INSURANCE COMPANY.

Civ. No. B-78-381.

United States District Court, D. Connecticut.

January 23, 1980.

L. Douglas Shrader, Zeldes, Needle & Cooper, Bridgeport, Conn., for plaintiff.

Snow Gene Mumford, Hartford, Conn., for defendant.

RULING ON OBJECTION TO MAGISTRATE'S MEMORANDUM OF DECISION

BURNS, District Judge.

Plaintiff, as administrator of the estate of his deceased son, has brought this action in Count One of which he seeks a judgment declaring that the uninsured motorists coverage in an automobile insurance policy issued to him is applicable to, and provides coverage for, all sums which he, as administrator, is legally entitled to recover as damages because of the fatal injuries suffered by his son Gary when the uninsured motorcycle Gary owned and was operating was struck by an uninsured motorist. Defendant refused payment, relying on a provision of the policy which purports to exclude coverage for injury suffered by an insured while occupying a highway vehicle, other than an insured highway vehicle, owned by the named insured or by a relative resident in his household. The plaintiff claims such an exclusion contravenes the laws and public policy of the state of Connecticut and is void or, if the exclusion is found to be valid, a motorcycle is not, as a matter of law, a highway vehicle as that term is used in the defendant's exclusion.

Plaintiff has objected to that portion of the Magistrate's ruling on the cross motions for summary judgment of the respective parties, in which the Magistrate abstained from decision on Count One of the complaint and directed the parties to secure decision thereon from the state courts. Jurisdiction in this action is based on diversity of citizenship, 28 U.S.C. § 1332, and the applicable law is that of the state of Connecticut. Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 58 S.Ct. 817, 82 L.Ed. 1188 (1938). The parties have pointed to no Connecticut cases which address the present issue¹ and the court has found none. This is then, as the Magistrate noted, an important and unresolved question under Connecticut law.

Consideration of the propriety of the Magistrate's ruling must at the outset examine the nature of the relief sought, a declaratory judgment. "The Declaratory Judgment Act was an authorization, not a command. It gave the federal courts competence to make a declaration of rights; it did not impose a duty to do so ... of course, a District Court cannot decline to entertain such an action as a matter of whim or personal disinclination. `A declaratory judgment, like other forms of equitable relief, should be granted only as a matter of judicial discretion exercised in the public interest' ..." Public Affairs Press v. Rickover, 369 U.S. 111, 112, 82 S.Ct. 580, 583, 7 L.Ed.2d 604 (1961) (citations omitted).² The question then, is whether abstention in this case would be an abuse of judicial discretion.

In his claim that abstention here is such an abuse, plaintiff points to the Supreme Court decision of Colorado River Water Conservation District v. United States, 424 U.S. 800, 96 S.Ct. 1236, 47 L.Ed.2d 483 (1975) which, on pages 814 to 817, 96 S.Ct. 1236, sets forth three categories of cases where declination or postponement of the exercise by a district court of its jurisdiction is appropriate: (1) cases involving federal constitutional issues which might be mooted by state court determination of state law; (2) cases in which "there have been presented difficult questions of state law bearing on policy problems of substantial public import whose importance transcends the result in the case at bar"; (id. 814, 96 S.Ct. 1244) and (3) cases seeking to restrain state criminal proceedings, state nuisance proceedings antecedent to state criminal proceedings or collection of state taxes. Clearly, the first and third categories are inapplicable to the instant case and abstention is justified, if at all, under category (2).³

The uninsured motorist coverage provisions of the Connecticut statutes were initially enacted in 1967 (Public Act 510), the act subsequently being modified in 1969 (P.A. 202), 1971 (Public Acts 364 and 767); and 1973 (Public Act 73-212). These provisions of the statutes, and regulations promulgated thereunder by the Connecticut Insurance Commissioner, have been the subject of at least seven decisions of the Connecticut Supreme Court, none of which address the present issue or point clearly to its resolution. See Fidelity & Casualty Co. v. Darrow, 161 Conn. 169, 286 A.2d 288 (1971); Simonette v. Great American Insurance Co., 165 Conn. 466, 338 A.2d 453 (1973); Weingarten v. Allstate Insurance Co., 169 Conn. 502, 363 A.2d 1055 (1975); Pecker v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 171 Conn. 443, 370 A.2d 1006 (1976); Roy v. Centennial Insurance Co., 171 Conn. 463, 370 A.2d 1011 (1976); Rosnick v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 172 Conn. 416, 374 A.2d 1076 (1977), and Safeco Insurance Companies v. Vetre, 174 Conn. 329, 387 A.2d 539 (1978).

The difficulty of the state law question alone is insufficient basis for the federal court to decline to act, Meredith v. Winter Haven, 320 U.S. 228, 234, 64 S.Ct. 7, 88 L.Ed. 9 (1943) but it is a factor of significance in the exercise of discretion by the court when policy considerations of importance to the state are involved and where the issue of state law can more definitively be resolved by the state courts.

Although in Brown v. Employers Mutual Liability Co., Civil No. B77-255, this court exercised its discretion to render a declaratory judgment in a case also involving the Connecticut uninsured motorist law, such action should not be construed to preclude an independent assessment of the propriety of abstention in other cases of first impression, raising new issues of construction under Connecticut's uninsured motorist law. In this case where the accident involved and the bringing of this case is comparatively recent and the state law questions difficult of resolution, involving an area of the law in which the state's interest is evidenced by significant legislative activity and administrative regulation and where the state courts have furnished no clear guidance as to the immediate question, such assessment supports the ruling of the Magistrate which is accordingly approved and adopted.

SO ORDERED.

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION

Plaintiff's automobile liability policy with the defendant insurer includes protection against injury by uninsured motorists, a provision mandated by state law. See Conn.Gen.Stat. § 38-175c. Coverage extends to resident members of the household, but defendant has denied coverage for fatal injuries suffered by plaintiff's son while driving his uninsured motorcycle when struck by an uninsured motorist in Bridgeport, Connecticut on August 18, 1978. That disclaimer rests on a policy exclusion for accidents involving vehicles owned, but not insured, by the plaintiff or resident relatives. The validity of such a limitation on protection otherwise afforded against the risk of uncompensated harm caused by an uninsured motorist is centrally at issue in the instant declaratory judgment action, presenting an important and unresolved question of public policy under Connecticut law. This Court is of the view that it may and should direct the parties to secure authoritative decision from the state courts.

The requisite independent jurisdictional basis for seeking the federal statutory remedy of declaratory judgment, see Skelly Oil Co. v. Phillips Petroleum Co., 339 U.S. 667, 671-672, 70 S.Ct. 876, 94 L.Ed. 1194 (1950), is here supplied by diversity of citizenship, 28 U.S.C. § 1332, and in all such cases state law of course provides the rule of decision, Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 58 S.Ct. 817, 82 L.Ed. 1188 (1938). If confronted with an open question in a diversity case, the federal court naturally must attempt to estimate what the state court would decide; that exercise may dispose of the immediate controversy, but there can be no guarantee of the forecast's accuracy in terms of the state tribunal's actual resolution of the issue in another case. The potential for inconsistency and attendant unfairness is obvious, ironically highlighted when it is the local citizen who invokes a ground of federal court jurisdiction originally intended to assure even-handed treatment to the out-of-stater. As a general proposition, such familiar anomalies of the statutory grant of diversity jurisdiction are subject to correction only by the Congress. In the exceptional diversity case, however, a federal court may on its own initiative properly decline to guess at the course of state law; this suit is one example.

Federal courts "may" render a declaratory judgment, 28 U.S.C. § 2201, and it has been long settled that entertaining such a claim for relief is indeed discretionary. See, e. g., Brillhart v. Excess Ins. Co., 316 U.S. 491, 494, 62 S.Ct. 1173, 86 L.Ed. 1620 (1942); Larson v. General Motors Corp., 134 F.2d 450, 453 (2 Cir.) (L. Hand, J.), cert. denied, 319 U.S. 762, 63 S.Ct. 1318, 87 L.Ed. 1713 (1943); Borchard, Declaratory Judgments at 312 (2d Ed. 1941). Reasoned limits are necessarily implied, see, e. g., Larson v. General Motors Corp., supra, but the court's discretion may be generously employed. If declaratory relief is otherwise "appropriate", for example, the mere "existence of another adequate remedy does not preclude" recourse to declaratory judgment, Rule 57, Fed.R.Civ.P., and the court may proceed to consider whether a different type of relief or a different proceeding would be more or less "effective or efficient, and hence whether the declaratory judgment action would serve a useful purpose", 6A Moore's Federal Practice ¶ 57.083 at 57-42 (2d Ed. 1974), see also Borchard, supra at 302-303.

The existence of power to act obviously does not impel its exercise, and a federal...