After decades of being enforced by the courts, the household exclusion was found to be violative of the Pennsylvania Motor Vehicle Financial Responsibility Law by the Supreme Court in Gallagher v. GEICO. (Credit: Katherine Welles/Shutterstock.com)
Exclusions in auto policies in Pennsylvania have recently undergone increased scrutiny by the courts. At the forefront of this re-evaluation is the household exclusion. That exclusion bars recovery of uninsured (UM) and underinsured (UIM) motorist benefits where the claimant sustained injury while operating a household vehicle insured on another policy, typically the personal auto/motorcycle situation.
After decades of being enforced by the courts, the household exclusion was found to run afoul of the Pennsylvania Motor Vehicle Financial Responsibility Law by the state Supreme Court in Gallagher v. GEICO. The factual predicate of the holding in Gallagher was the availability of inter-policy stacking under the policy from which benefits were sought. Thus, under policies providing stacked coverage, the household exclusion is unenforceable.
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