The appeals court first stated that Georgia courts employ three tests in determining the order in which the available policies should be stacked: the "receipt of premium" test, the "more closely identified with" test, and the "circumstances of the injury" test. Under the "receipt of premium" test, the insurer that received a premium from the injured insured was deemed to be primarily responsible for providing coverage. Under the "more closely identified with" test, the policy with which the injured party was most closely identified must provide primary coverage. If neither of those tests were helpful, the courts looked to the circumstances of the injury to see which policy provided primary coverage.

The court explained that because the receipt of premium test was of no avail here (Clifford paid the premium on all three policies), it must turn to the second test and examine William's relationship to the three policies to see if it could determine if he was more closely identified with any of them.

The court stated that in applying this test, it had previously found that a family relationship to a particular policy took precedence over other relationships such as employer/employee. Here, however, because all the policies were family policies it must determine whether William could be more closely identified with any of the three policies.

Although William was not listed as an insured on the policies, Clifford's auto policy listed a 22-year-old male as a rated driver and occasional user of one of the insured vehicles. This reference, the court stated, was presumably to William, who was 23 years old and lived with his parents at the time of his death. And while Clifford was a named insured on all of the policies at the time of the incident, he originally purchased the Progressive policy to provide coverage on a car he bought for his daughter, Catherine, and she was the sole named insured.

Therefore, the court agreed with the trial court that this factor provided a basis for distinguishing the Progressive policy from the Nationwide policies held in Clifford's name only. And because the relation between parent and child was generally held to be closer than that of siblings, the court found William to be more closely identified with the two Nationwide policies maintained in Clifford's name alone than with the Progressive policy.

As between the two Nationwide policies, the court noted that the UM provision of the umbrella policy specifically stated that the policy was intended to provide UM coverage in excess of the amount received from, or on behalf of, the person liable for the damages, and the amount received from the underlying insurance policy that the umbrella policy required Clifford to maintain. The policy also specifically required that Clifford "maintain an underlying insurance policy or policies described in the Declarations which provide uninsured motorists coverage with the listed underlying limits."

Clifford's auto policy provided the specific amount of UM coverage required in the declarations. Therefore, given the reference to William as a rated driver on Clifford's auto policy, and the fact that the umbrella policy was specifically intended to provide excess coverage behind that policy, the court found William to be more closely identified with Clifford's auto policy and that policy accordingly provided secondary UM coverage behind the Nationwide policy in William's name.

Next, the court sought to determine whether William could be more closely identified with either the umbrella policy or the Progressive policy.

The court found the trial court's reliance upon the mere nature of an umbrella policy was misplaced, as policies providing auto liability coverage were subject to the provisions of OCGA § 37-7-11, and thus must provide UM coverage in accordance with the statute. Therefore, the court stated, umbrella policies could be stacked like other policies to provide UM coverage.

Because the UM provision of the policy did not mention any other potential insurance coverage, Progressive argued that the court should interpret the provision as Nationwide's commitment to provide excess coverage behind the Jackson policy and Clifford's auto policy alone, without regard to other policies. Thus, Progressive argued that the umbrella policy should not be stacked behind the Progressive policy, but before it.

Nationwide pointed to the "Other Insurance" provision of the umbrella policy, which provided: "Coverage under this policy is … excess over any other valid and collectible insurance, except in the case where the other insurance is written specifically as excess over the limits of this policy." Nationwide argued that the trial court correctly placed the umbrella policy last in priority, because nothing in the Progressive policy specifically stated that it was intended to provide excess coverage over that policy.

According to the court, the existence of such "other insurance" provisions did not preempt the application of one of the standard tests for determining priority, thus because William was more closely identified with the umbrella policy held in Clifford's name alone than the Progressive policy originally purchased for Catherine, the umbrella policy should be third in priority behind Clifford's auto policy, and the Progressive policy should be last. The court therefore reversed the trial court's grant of partial summary judgment to Nationwide and its denial of partial summary judgment to Progressive on that issue.

Finally, because the court found that the priority of the three insurance policies could be determined through application of the more closely identified with test, it agreed with the trial court that proration did not apply here.