U.S. Fidelity and Guaranty Co. v. Williams

• Decision Date: 18 July 1979
• Docket Number: No. LL-426,LL-426
• Citation: 375 So.2d 328
• Parties: UNITED STATES FIDELITY AND GUARANTY COMPANY, Appellant, v. Lila WILLIAMS, as personal representative of the Estate of Barbara Jean Young, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

Page 328

375 So.2d 328

UNITED STATES FIDELITY AND GUARANTY COMPANY, Appellant, v. Lila WILLIAMS, as personal representative of the Estate of Barbara Jean Young, Appellee.

No. LL-426.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, First District.

July 18, 1979.

Rehearing Denied Oct. 12, 1979.

Milton H. Baxley, II, Gainesville, for appellant.

Robert P. Cates, of Goldin & Cates, Gainesville, for appellee.

ROBERT P. SMITH, Jr., Judge.

Appellant appeals from that part of a final declaratory judgment holding that appellee's decedent was a "named insured" under an automobile insurance policy issued by appellant to the decedent's mother; appellee cross-appeals the court's finding that decedent and her mother, the named insured, were not members of same household at the time of decedent's death. We reverse on both points.

Although appellee's decedent was noted on the policy as the sole operator of the insured vehicle, this did not make her a "named insured" for purposes of uninsured motorist coverage under the terms of the policy or under Section 627.727, Florida Statutes (1977). See generally Kohly v. Royal Indemnity Co., 190 So.2d 819 (Fla. 3d DCA 1966); Cert. denied, 200 So.2d 813 (Fla.1967); Mattingly v. Liberty Mutual Ins. Co., 363 So.2d 147 (Fla. 4th DCA 1978).

On the second point, however, the manifest weight of the evidence in the record shows that the "named insured," Beatrice Griffin, was a member of the same household as appellee's decedent Barbara Young at the time of Young's death, entitling appellee to uninsured motorist coverage under the policy's amendatory endorsement. See also Hunt v. State Farm Mutual Ins. Co., 349 So.2d 642 (Fla. 1st DCA 1977).

Therefore we reverse paragraphs one and two of the declaratory judgment but affirm the court's finding that appellee is entitled to uninsured motorist coverage under Griffin's policy.

AFFIRMED in part and REVERSED in part.

MILLS, C. J., and HENRY CLAY MITCHELL, Jr., Associate Judge, concur.

ON PETITION FOR REHEARING

PER CURIAM.

The petition for rehearing is DENIED.

MILLS, C. J., and MITCHELL, HENRY CLAY, Jr., Associate Judge, concur.

ROBERT SMITH, Jr., J., dissents.

ROBERT P. SMITH, Jr., Judge, dissenting:

We have carefully reexamined the record in light of USF&G's contention on rehearing that the trial court's judgment, after a nonjury trial, rested on a finding of fact made on conflicting evidence, and that we must accede to the finding that Barbara Young and Beatrice Griffin, her mother, "were not residents of the same household at the time of the death" of Barbara Young in an auto accident on March 20, 1977. Since we have decided that Barbara Young was not a named insured under the automobile policy issued August 1, 1975, USF& G concludes that she was not an insured at all.

This is a claim by the personal representative of Barbara Young, deceased, for uninsured motorist benefits under a USF&G policy issued to Beatrice Griffin as the named insured on August 1, 1975, and renewed a year later. The policy was intended to provide uninsured motorist benefits to Beatrice Griffin and her household members, including daughter Barbara Young, whom the application listed as the only driver because, as the application stated, Beatrice Griffin "is not licensed and does not drive." Beatrice Griffin had credit, but no driving ability; daughter Barbara Young had no credit but was licensed; both needed transportation. Hence a car purchase and this insuring transaction.

In the dubious testimony of Turner Sanders ¹ I think there is evidence that for a period of one year, or two years, or three years ending shortly before Barbara Young's fatal accident in March 1977, Beatrice Griffin lived with Turner Sanders in her rented house on Southwest Sixth Place in Gainesville. At the time Barbara was killed, Sanders testified, Beatrice lived at the same place, or at least spent "some nights" there, with her son Leon, his "old lady," and their "baby boy." During that period, Barbara Young lived in a rented place on Northeast 25th Terrace with her children and sister Ethel's, six in all.

If the determinative issue in this case were whether Beatrice Griffin slept under the same roof with daughter Barbara at the time of Barbara's death, I think we should be obliged by Sander's testimony to sustain USF&G's position in deference to the trial court's fact finding that mother and daughter were not "residents of the same household" when Barbara died on March 20, 1977. But that is not the issue; and it appears that, whatever may be the effect of the trial court's finding of Beatrice Griffin's household residence "at the time of the death" of Barbara Young, the trial court may have been led into too restrictive a definition of the "household" concept written into the policy.

In determining whether Barbara Young was an additional insured under USF& G's policy, and entitled to uninsured motorist benefits, we and the trial court must give appropriate effect, if possible consistently with the facts, to the policy's obvious purpose to insure both Beatrice Griffin and Barbara Young (the trial court thought that purpose sufficiently obvious to support a finding that Barbara Young was a "named insured"); we must carefully regard the nature of Beatrice Griffin's "household" during the 18-month period the policy was outstanding before a claim event occurred; and we must employ canons of construction which construe "residing in the same household" as liberally as those words may reasonably permit in common usage, so to give effect to the intentions of the parties and the purpose of the insurance. ² By these standards, though we must disregard Beatrice Griffin's testimony that she lived in Barbara Young's house on Northeast 25th Terrace at the time of Barbara's death in March 1977, there is other evidence which, if believed by the trier of facts, supports the conclusion that this mother and daughter were residents of the same household, though not always of the same house, throughout the policy period, and that the household nexus, existing in fact and in the contemplation of the contracting parties, was not broken at the time of Barbara's death.

In identifying additional insureds, USF&G's policy might have defined "residing in the same household" as living continuously in the same house; but it did not. The policy might have defined "household" as a single place of residence exclusive of all others; but it did not. The concept of household as a family unit, rather than as an address, is incorporated in the Automobile Reparations Reform Act, which is useful here only by analogy: Section 627.732(4), Florida Statutes (1977), provides that one resides in the family household if he "usually makes his home in the same family unit, whether or not temporarily living elsewhere." Absent restrictive definitions in either the USF&G policy or the uninsured motorist protection statutes, we are at liberty to define "household" with due regard to the cultural characteristics given that term by she, who bought the policy to protect the "household."

In these days of nuclear families, households extend beyond houses to include children, experimenting with independence, who live mostly apart from their parents; estranged spouses living apart in lives of transition; family members who recently lived continuously within the unit, and who still come and go freely, as persons accorded household identity and subjected to household claims. Miller v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co., 127 N.J.Super. 37, 316 A.2d 51 (1974) ³; Travelers Ins. Co. v. Mixon, 118 Ga.App. 31, 162 S.E.2d 830 (1968) ⁴; Hobbs v. Fireman's Fund American Ins. Co., 339 So.2d 28 (La.App.1976), appl. denied 341 So.2d 896 (La.1977) ⁵; State Farm Mut. Automobile Ins. Co. v. Elkins, 52 Cal.App.3d 534, 125 Cal.Rptr. 139 (1975) ⁶; State Farm Mutual Automobile Ins. Co. v. Holloway, 423 F.2d 1281 (10th Cir. 1970). See also American Cas. Co. v. Harleysville Ins., 238 Md. 322, 208 A.2d 597 (1965). That being true even in cases of conventionally middle-class white families, it is more demonstrably true in the case of a prolific and relatively poor black family like this one, several of whose numerous members were almost continuously transient within Gainesville, depending on who had money, who could look after the children, who could drive a car and had one to drive, and who had heat in the house.

These are the facts as I understand the record:

Beatrice Griffin, who had nine children and numerous grandchildren, works at Graham Hall at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Her testimony is partly corroborated by other family members and neighbors. She stated that she lived during most of 1975 in her rented house on Southwest Sixth Place, and her family living in that house included Barbara Young, who worked at Sunland Training Center, Barbara's four children, daughter Ethel's two children in Barbara's care, and son Leon and his companion, Georgia Barnes. During the summer of 1975, using credit available to her from the campus credit union, Beatrice Griffin bought a 1971 Ford "so I would have transportation to get back and forth to work and to church." Her application for USF&G insurance on the car, taken by agent Herbert Treweek, listed Bobbie F. Young (Barbara Young) as the only driver and correctly stated: "Beatrice Griffin is not licensed and does not drive. Bobbie F. Young is her daughter." The policy was issued effective August 1, 1975.

In the latter part of 1975, according to Beatrice Griffin's testimony, Barbara Young and the children moved "out to Carver Gardens." Within a month, Beatrice followed, taking her clothes and her studio couch (Beatrice's bed was at daughter Dot's house). As before, Beatrice testified, Barbara "took me back and forth to work and...