Collins v. St. Paul Mercury Insurance Co.

SUPREME COURT CASES

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State: Illinois

Court: 1st District Appellate

Docket No: 1-06-3601 Rel

Case Date: 03/25/2008

Preview:SECOND DIVISION March 25, 2008

No. 1-06-3601 LISA L. COLLINS, as Special Representative of the Estate of Stanley Collins, Plaintiff and Counterdefendant-Appellant, v. ST. PAUL MERCURY INSURANCE COMPANY, and CUMMINS-ALLISON CORPORATION, Defendants and CounterplaintiffsAppellees (St. Paul Mercury Insurance Company, Third-Party Plaintiff; Michael Fluherty, Third-Party Defendant). ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) )

Appeal from the Circuit Court of Cook County.

Honorable James F. Henry, Judge Presiding.

JUSTICE SOUTH delivered the opinion of the court: This appeal arises from an order of the circuit court of Cook County granting defendants' motion for summary judgment, finding there was no ambiguity in the terms of the insurance policy and the underinsured motorist (UIM) endorsement for decedent's company vehicle covered him only when he was in the assigned vehicle in Mississippi. Plaintiff, Lisa Collins, instituted this declaratory judgment action against defendants, St. Paul Mercury Insurance Company (St. Paul) and Cummins-Allison Corporation (Cummins), seeking a declaration that the Mississippi UIM endorsement on decedent's company vehicle applied in the event of his

1-06-3601 death from an accident in another company vehicle in Illinois and that, consequently, its stacking provision entitled her to stack the policy limits for all of the insured Cummins' vehicles. FACTS The decedent, Stan Collins, and his wife, plaintiff, were residents of Mississippi in 2004 and decedent was employed by Cummins as a technician. As part of his compensation, he was furnished with a company vehicle, a 2003 Pontiac Aztec (Aztec), for which he made monthly payments to Cummins. He kept the vehicle garaged at his home in Mississippi. St. Paul issued general commercial liability policy No. CK01205207 to Cummins, which included fleet auto coverage for all of the vehicles owned by Cummins, including the Aztec. The St. Paul policy also provided UIM and uninsured motorist (UM) coverage for the decedent's Aztec and all of the other Cummins vehicles, including those that were in Illinois. The UIM coverage for the vehicles in each state was provided in a separate endorsement and included coverage that was specific to each state. On December 11, 2004, while he was in Illinois for work-related training at a Cummins facility, the decedent was involved in a fatal automobile accident with an underinsured vehicle. At the time, he was a passenger in a Cummins vehicle, a 2001 Dodge Caravan, which was being driven by a Cummins employee, Michael Fluherty, during travel related to the training session. The Caravan was a Cummins fleet vehicle and was insured under the same St. Paul policy as the Aztec. The Caravan, which was garaged in Illinois, was covered by an Illinois UIM endorsement to the St. Paul policy. The vehicle in which the decedent was a passenger was struck by a car being driven by

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1-06-3601 Melvin Kennedy, who was also killed.. The other vehicle belonged to Laura Wells and was insured by a State Farm Insurance Company (State Farm) auto policy which provided coverage only for $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident. Pursuant to the St. Paul policy, which provided UIM coverage of $1,000,000, Wells' vehicle was an underinsured vehicle as the policy defined that term. The introduction to the UIM endorsement for vehicles garaged in Mississippi, including the decedent's Aztec, states as follows, in pertinent part: "UNINSURED AND UNDERINSURED MOTORISTS PROTECTION MISSISSIPPI-STACKED We've designed this agreement to cover damages for bodily injury and property damage caused by an accident which the named insured or anyone else covered under this agreement are legally entitled to collect from the driver or owner of an uninsured or underinsured vehicle. This agreement provides coverage for covered autos registered or mainly garaged in Mississippi." This endorsement further provides that the applicable UIM coverage limit is calculated by adding together the limits of all of the policies which have been issued to Cummins. The policy contains the following language with respect to the stacking process: "If there is more than one covered auto, our maximum limit for any one accident is the total, added together, of the limits that apply to

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1-06-3601 autos the named insured owns which are covered autos." The Mississippi UIM endorsement defines covered autos as follows: "The Coverage Summary, shows which autos are covered under this agreement. Scheduled autos. If this is shown in the Coverage Summary, the autos listed in the schedule are the covered autos at the time the agreement goes into effect." Both the decedent's Aztec and Fluherty's Caravan were listed in the coverage summary as covered autos. However, the Illinois UIM endorsement does not contain a stacking provision. St. Paul's fleet policy used the term "protected person" to identify those persons who are entitled to coverage under that policy. The Mississippi UIM endorsement used the following language to provide that any person who is in a covered auto is a protected person: "If the named insured is shown in the Introduction as *** any other form of organization, then the following are protected persons:

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