Pennsylvania court ruling could temper challenges to auto coverage exclusions
A Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision has set a higher bar for challenges to insurance policy exclusions.
A Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision has set a higher bar for challenges to insurance policy exclusions.
The high court ruled Monday that an insurance provider may exclude coverage for vehicles an insured regularly uses but does not own. In its opinion, the court rejected the notion that Pennsylvania’s Motor Vehicle Financial Responsibility Law prohibits any coverage exclusions.
“This sends the message that it’s going to be very difficult to invalidate other exclusions at this point,” said Mark Altemose, the managing partner at Cohen, Feeley, Altemose & Rambo.
Altemose represented plaintiff Matthew Rush in a challenge to Erie Insurance Exchange’s “regular use” exclusion to underinsured motorist coverage.
Altemose said the opinion applied narrowly to the regular use exclusion, but he said the justices made clear in their ruling that “As long as the exclusions are not contrary to public policy or the express language of the statute, they will uphold them.”
McCormick & Priore shareholder Glen Shikunov, who represented Erie, said the ruling is “actually a win for both sides.” He said analysis in the 38-page opinion provides clarity that benefits the legal industry as a whole.
“It just brings it back to the general idea that unless there is a clear anomaly in the law, the court is going to continue to apply precedent as is,” Shikunov said.
The case, captioned Rush v. Erie Insurance Exchange, is not the first in which the Supreme Court considered and upheld a regular use exclusion. But those earlier rulings predated the high court’s landmark Gallagher v. Geico Indemnity decision, which in 2019 invalidated household vehicle exclusions as a means of getting around providing stacking coverage.
The plaintiffs argued that Gallagher undermined prior rulings on regular use exclusions.
“We knew that it was an uphill battle from the beginning,” Altemose said, “but we thought that the Supreme Court’s decision in Gallagher … provided some ammunition to attack the validity of the exclusion.”
The plaintiffs succeeded in convincing the Superior Court that the exclusion was invalid, but the Supreme Court determined that the lower appellate erroneously concluded that underinsured motorist insurance must follow a person in all circumstances.
The high court agreed with Erie’s argument that the lower appeals court disregarded precedent in ruling that the regular use exclusion violated the MVFRL.
“If the MVFRL does not require that UIM coverage follow the insured in all circumstances, then the MVFRL cannot be read to prohibit exclusions from UIM coverage” Donohue ruled. “Consequently,” she continued, “the insurance contract controls the scope of UIM coverage and the ‘regular use’ exclusion is enforceable.”
Shikunov said the ruling makes clear that the terms of an insurance contract matter, which could temper legal challenges that generically assert that any exclusion in invalid.
The high court has considered a host of cases since 2019 in which insureds use Gallagher to argue against various insurance policy exclusions. But those challenges have met resistance in recent years, with the justices stressing a narrow interpretation of the ruling.
According to Altemose, the court’s leanings shifted after the death of former Chief Justice Max Baer, who authored the majority opinion in Gallagher. Altemose said Baer expressed a strong disapproval of exclusions.
Since Baer’s death in 2021, Altemose said, the court has not been as favorable toward invalidating exclusions.
Altemose added: “I’m not sure the other members of the court felt as strongly about it as he did.”