Last week, the Ohio Supreme Court issued a ruling and opinion in the matter of Snyder v. Am. Family Ins. Co., 114 Ohio St.3d 239, 2007-Ohio-4004.
The practical result of this ruling is that you, Mr. and Mrs. Citizen, are no longer protected by your uninsured motorist coverage against injuries and damages caused by any person or entity that is entitled to political subdivision immunity under R.C. 2744.
Okay, lawyer-man, what does this mean in the language of real people, you ask? Well, let's start with a real life scenario:
Rookie, un-paid auxiliary police officer responding to his first "call" ever, to assist another officer at a routine traffic stop, races with lights (maybe, witness accounts differ), but no sirens through a busy commercial district at 80 to 84 miles per hour and t-bones a car coming out of a business driveway, killing the driver, a husband and father of two.
Family has bought and paid the premiums for $800,000 of uninsured motorist insurance coverage. Family sues auxiliary police officer and the political subdivision he works for. Auxiliary police officer and political subdivision assert immunity defense under state law. Family can try to defeat immunity, but it VERY difficult to do and would very likely take 3 years of litigation, possibly all the way to the Ohio Supreme Court and back.
Ohio's uninsured motorist law defines what constitutes an "uninsured motorist" for purposes of triggering the kind of insurance coverage family bought. One of the definitions of "uninsured motorist" is: any person or entity immune under R.C. 2744.
So, prior to the decision last week in Snyder, if the family cannot defeat the immunity asserted by the auxiliary police officer and the political subdivision, essentially making them uninsured, the family can collect against the uninsured motorist coverage they paid for, specifically to protect themselves against wrongdoers who have no insurance, or in this case, are immune from liability.
After the decision in Snyder, the insurance company doesn't have to pay the benefits because of the court's interpretation of the insurance policy language. I'll spare you the technical legal mumbo-jumbo of the court's decision and get to the point:
Every uninsured motorist policy written in the State of Ohio has the same language relied on by the Court to allow the insurance company to not have to pay uninsured benefits to insured persons when injured by a person or entity who is immune from liability under R.C. 2744.
What does this mean for you? If you are out driving with your family and are hit and injured (or worse killed) by any vehicle operated by a political subdivision (e.g. police, fire, city, county, state, RTA, Metroparks, etc., etc, etc.) you are no longer protected by your uninsured motorist coverage. (Unless the limits of your coverage exceed the limits of the entity that hit you and you successfully beat the immunity, which is darn near impossible.)
You may or may not know that the judges of the Ohio Supreme Court are elected in partisan elections. In recent years, the United States Chamber of Commerce and the Insurance Industry has poured millions and millions of dollars in hard and soft money in order to get judges on the Ohio Supreme Court who are sympathetic to business and industry and insurance companies and, who, frankly, don't give a damn about flesh and blood people.
So what we have in Ohio is the best jurisprudence money can buy. This case makes me ashamed to be a member of the legal profession in this state.
CEP
UPDATE: In fairness, I should point out that this was not a unanimous decision by the court.
Justice Cupp wrote the opinion; Justices Lundberg Stratton, O'Connor, O'Donnell and Chief Justice Moyer concurred.
Justices Pfeifer and Lanzinger, dissented.
Remember folks, these people are elected.
CEP
Thursday, August 30, 2007
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3 comments:
so, the police can accidently shoot someone with a gun and the person has recourse, but if they accidently crash into you with a vehicle then you have no recourse?
Anonymous -- Well, like most things -- it's a bit more complicated than that. The legal claims for a police shooting would include constitutional claims, etc. for which there is no state law immunity. Also, you cannot insure against an accidental shooting. Ohio law specifically provides for people to insure themselves against a person who causes a motor vehicle crash, but doesn't have any insurance (or is uncollectible because of immunity).
This case essentially prevents people in Ohio from insuring against an uncollectible political subdivision that causes them personal injury involving a motor vehicle. It creates a pretty significant exposure to people for which they thought they insured against, but now did not and cannot. Unless, of course, the insurance companies want to change their insurance contact language to include such claims. I don't know about you, but I'm not holdin' my breath on that one.
CEP
I've been saying for a good while, we need to strip the governments of their immunity defenses, first of all. Second, we have to hold the insurance companies to their contracts and, if we are regulating them at the state level, make sure the duty to the policyowner is discharged first and foremost by the language of the insurance contract. In this case you're quoting, Roger, everybody has missed taking care of the primary goal & responsibility, to protect the contractholder.
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