State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Pflibsen, 83-1345

• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Iowa
• Writing for the Court: WOLLE
• Citation: 350 N.W.2d 202
• Parties: STATE FARM MUTUAL AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE COMPANY, Appellee, v. Kathryn Joan PFLIBSEN, individually and as legal representative of the Estate of Clay Stephen Pflibsen, Defendant, and Dean J. Boeckholt, Appellant.
• Docket Number: No. 83-1345,83-1345
• Decision Date: 13 June 1984

Page 202

350 N.W.2d 202 STATE FARM MUTUAL AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE COMPANY, Appellee,
v.
Kathryn Joan PFLIBSEN, individually and as legal representative of the Estate of Clay Stephen Pflibsen, Defendant,
and Dean J. Boeckholt, Appellant. No. 83-1345. Supreme Court of Iowa. June 13, 1984.

Page 203

William G. Enke, of Mitchell, Coleman, Perkins & Enke, P.C., Fort Dodge, for appellant.

Donald Hohnbaum and Alan Pape, of Christianson, Hohnbaum & George, Des Moines, for appellee.

Considered by McCORMICK, P.J., and McGIVERIN, LARSON, SCHULTZ and WOLLE, JJ.

WOLLE, Justice.

The sole issue we address in this appeal is whether appellee State Farm established its right to summary judgment on a question of policy coverage. The trial court determined from the summary judgment record that State Farm's policy of automobile liability insurance did not cover the husband of State Farm's named insured, operating his father's automobile, when he collided with and injured appellant Dean J. Boeckholt [Boeckholt]. We find that the

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summary judgment record disclosed genuine issues of fact material to the question of policy coverage. We therefore reverse and remand.

I. Background Facts and Proceedings.

The State Farm policy of liability insurance issued to Kathryn Joan Pflibsen [Kathryn] on her Mazda automobile extended coverage to the use by an insured of a non-owned car but defined "non-owned car" in part as:

a car not:

................................................................................

* * *

furnished or available for the regular or frequent use of:

you, your spouse, or any relatives.

During the policy period, Kathryn filed a petition for dissolution of her marriage with Clay Pflibsen [Clay] and moved out of their home, taking the Mazda and leaving Clay without a car. Clay then obtained permission to use his father's Oldsmobile automobile and had access to it for about two weeks. On October 11, 1981, Clay was killed while driving the Oldsmobile when he collided with and seriously injured Boeckholt.

Boeckholt sued for damages both Clay's father as owner of the Oldsmobile and Kathryn as personal representative of Clay's estate. He alleged that Clay's negligent operation of the Oldsmobile had caused the collision. Boeckholt settled his claim against Clay's father for the amount of liability insurance coverage provided by the father's separate policy covering the Oldsmobile. He continued to pursue his claim against Clay's estate, however, on the theory that the non-owned car coverage of State Farm's policy provided additional liability coverage for the collision. State Farm then commenced this declaratory judgment action against Boeckholt and Clay's estate, contending that the Oldsmobile had been furnished and regularly available to Clay and therefore did not come within the policy's coverage of non-owned cars. After State Farm moved for summary judgment pursuant to Iowa Rule of Civil Procedure 237, the defendants filed written resistances and Boeckholt filed his own motion for summary judgment. In his written resistance Boeckholt relied heavily on testimony given by the parties who had been deposed in the two lawsuits; he specifically identified several issues of disputed fact which he contended were material on the question of coverage.

In its order granting summary judgment to State Farm the trial court made findings of fact but did not specifically refer to the deposition testimony relied upon by the resisting defendants. In analyzing the crucial policy language quoted above the trial court relied upon General Casualty Co. of Wisconsin v. Hines, 261 Iowa 738, 156 N.W.2d 118 (1968), in which nearly identical policy language was applied to somewhat different facts. The trial court quoted and relied upon three of the specific questions referred to in our General Casualty Co. case and initially used as "signposts" to analyze similar policy language in Farm Bureau Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. v. Marr, 128 F.Supp. 67, 70 (D.N.J.1955):

1. Was the use of the car in question made available most of the time to the insured?

2. Did the insured make more than mere occasional use of the car?

3. Did the insured need to obtain permission to use the car or had that been granted by blanket authority?

261 Iowa at 741, 156 N.W.2d at 124. The trial court answered questions 1 and 3, but not 2, in its findings of fact:

Prior to his death, Clay had the 1978 Oldsmobile available to him at all times, used it when he wanted without asking permission each time he used it. He had been granted blanket authority to use the car without restrictions for an indefinite period of time.

The trial court then tracked the policy language in holding that "The 1978 Oldsmobile was not a non-owned vehicle, in that it was furnished or available for the regular and frequent use of Clay."

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