A trial court ruled in favor of American, an appellate court affirmed, holding that the trial court's decision in favor of American was proper because there was no UM coverage under the policy as a matter of law, and the coverage dispute reached the Supreme Court of Michigan.

The American Policy

The American insurance policy defined “uninsured motor vehicle” as:

[A] land motor vehicle . . .

1. [t]hat is a hit-and-run vehicle and neither the driver nor [the] owner can be identified. The vehicle must hit, or cause an object to hit, an “insured”, a covered “auto” or a vehicle an “insured” is “occupying”. If there is no direct physical contact with the hit-and-run vehicle, the facts of the “accident” must be corroborated by competent evidence, other than the testimony of any person having a claim under this or any similar insurance as the result of such “accident”.

The Michigan Supreme Court's Decision

The court reversed.

In its decision, the court rejected the appellate court's conclusion that the ambulance hit the drywall, and not vice versa, because the drywall lay “stationary [in the road] at the time of the accident.” The court added that there was no dispute that the drywall left the bed of the truck; that the drywall came to rest in the road; and that, shortly thereafter, the ambulance collided with the drywall as the drywall lay stationary in the road.

In the court's view, using the “commonly understood meaning of the provision's terms,” one way of triggering coverage under the UM provision in the American policy was for an unidentified vehicle to cause an object to come in contact with a covered auto. The court said that that was “exactly what happened when the unidentified vehicle in this case lost its load in the path of the oncoming ambulance.” The court reasoned that, by depositing the drywall directly in the path of an oncoming vehicle, the unidentified vehicle “caused the drywall to come in contact with the oncoming vehicle.”

The court rejected American's contention that coverage was precluded because the drywall was stationary when the collision occurred. In the court's opinion, the “pertinent inquiry under the policy” was whether a vehicle that lost its load in a roadway, thereby placing a stationary object in the path of a moving vehicle, could be said to have caused the stationary object to come in contact with the moving vehicle.

According to the court, when the question was “properly framed,” the answer was straightforward: depositing drywall directly in the path of an oncoming vehicle was sufficient to cause it to come in contact with that vehicle.

Therefore, the court concluded, the phrase “cause an object to hit” in the American policy did not preclude coverage under the uninsured motor vehicle provision in this case merely because the drywall was stationary at the time of the accident.

The case is Drouillard v. American Alternative Ins. Corp., No. 157518 (Mich. July 9, 2019).