USAA owes $30K under auto policy for injuries sustained while loading luggage
"Here, Estep contends that his accident occurred while he was loading his car with luggage, which was part of a greater mission of returning home to Chesapeake with that luggage," Judge Frank K. Friedman wrote on behalf of the majority. "Simply put, transporting luggage is a valid and expected use of a vehicle, and one cannot transport the baggage without first packing the vehicle."
A majority of the Virginia Court of Appeals sided with an auto insurance policyholder Tuesday, upholding a circuit court order awarding him $30,000 for medical benefits for injuries he sustained while packing his vehicle in a hotel parking lot.
Bruce Estep was loading bags into his car after checking out of a hotel in Fairfax County, Virginia, before traveling home in November 2016. He was “leaning into the rear of the vehicle, bent over at the waist and reaching into the vehicle, such that his body was in the vehicle from the waist up” when a gust of wind sent the luggage cart in his direction, striking him on the right side and causing him to fall to the ground, according to the court’s majority opinion written by Judge Frank K. Friedman.
Estep was seriously injured, with medical bills totaling $123,989.07, and incurred expenses of $71,813.27. He sought coverage from his automobile insurance policy with United Services Automobile Association, but USAA claimed Estep’s injuries did not fall within the coverage afforded under his policy and Code §38.2-2201, the opinion said.
Estep then filed a complaint in Chesapeake Circuit Court against USAA for $30,000, alleging that the insurance company failed to comply with the terms of his policy. Judge Robert G. MacDonald entered judgment in favor of Estep.
USAA appealed, arguing that Estep’s injuries did not “ar[i]se out of the ownership, maintenance, or use of a motor vehicle,” nor was he “in or upon, entering or alighting from” the vehicle when he was struck by the luggage cart.
The majority disagreed, concluding that there was a “tangible nexus between the accident and Estep’s use of the car as a vehicle,” citing the Virginia Supreme Court’s 1998 ruling in Edwards v. Gov’t Emps. Ins., which held that the nonowner of a car was using the car for insurance purposes while he was injured replacing a tire.
“Here, Estep contends that his accident occurred while he was loading his car with luggage, which was part of a greater mission of returning home to Chesapeake with that luggage,” Friedman wrote. “Simply put, transporting luggage is a valid and expected use of a vehicle, and one cannot transport the baggage without first packing the vehicle.”
Other courts, such as the Minnesota Court of Appeals in Il. Farms Ins. v. Marvin (2006) held that “a person who had been ‘loading objects into the back of a vehicle and the upper half of her body had just been inside the vehicle mere moments before’ an accident ‘was in the process of using the vehicle as a motor vehicle.’” Additionally, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey concluded in Burlington Ins. v. Northland Ins. (2011) that “[g]enerally, a person injured in the process of unloading cargo from a vehicle is considered a user of the vehicle and entitled to coverage under an automobile policy because of the ‘substantial nexus between the injury and the use of the vehicle,’” the opinion said.
In the present case, USAA relied on the Virginia Supreme Court’s 2019 finding in Corriveau ex rel. Ballagh v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins., among others, arguing that ”under the principles applicable in the Commonwealth, if the … incident could have occurred regardless of the vehicle, there is no coverage.”
“USAA relies upon cases involving guns and assaults to suggest that Estep’s car was simply a ‘situs’ of an injury unrelated to the use of his car as a car. Under this logic, USAA claims the luggage cart, once in motion, could have struck the insured ‘anywhere.’ We cannot accept this core premise of USAA’s argument,” Friedman wrote. “Under the facts of this case, Estep’s car was more than just the situs of the injury. Estep was using the insured vehicle for an intended purpose at the time of the accident—and the cart was present to assist in the intended use. Accordingly, this was not an incident unrelated to the vehicle that could have happened anywhere—it was a car[-]loading accident that occurred in a car-loading area and involved car-loading equipment. And it occurred in connection with an imminent drive home from a hotel.”
According to the majority, there was a “causal relationship” between the incident and the employment of the insured vehicle “as a vehicle” because Estep was not using the vehicle “in a manner foreign to its design purpose.” Concluding that Estep was “occupying” or “using” the motor vehicle during the injury, the circuit court properly awarded judgment to Estep under his USAA policy.
Judge Doris Henderson Causey was also assigned to the case.
In a lone dissent, Judge Mary Grace O’Brien disagreed with the majority, finding that the circumstances of the accident did not establish a causal relationship “between the incident and the employment of the insured vehicle as a vehicle,” and thus, Estep’s injuries were not caused by an accident “arising out of his use of the vehicle,” she wrote.
“Here, the cause of Estep’s accident—the wind blowing the luggage cart into him—was ‘merely incidental or tangential’ to his use of the vehicle. The simple fact that Estep was loading the vehicle when he was injured does not necessarily render the accident ‘vehicle caused,’” O’Brien wrote. “The wind blowing the luggage cart into Estep is more properly characterized as [] ‘the intervention of an[] event unrelated to the use of the vehicle,’ such as accidental discharge of the rifle in Jones. … Although Estep might not have been injured but for his loading luggage into the trunk of the vehicle … the requisite causal relationship is not established when the cause of the accident was an unlucky happenstance of nature—an external event not intrinsic to the use of the vehicle.”
Todd M. Fiorella, a Norfolk, Virginia-based attorney with Fraim & Fiorella representing USAA, and Scott V. Whitlow, a solo practitioner in Virginia Beach, representing Estep, did not return messages seeking comment.