CALIFORNIA ST. AUTO. ASSN. INTER-INS v. Garamendi

6 Cal. App. 4th 1409, 8 Cal. Rptr. 2d 366
CourtCalifornia Court of Appeal
DecidedMay 29, 1992
DocketDocket Nos. A049925, A049887
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 6 Cal. App. 4th 1409 (CALIFORNIA ST. AUTO. ASSN. INTER-INS v. Garamendi) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering California Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
CALIFORNIA ST. AUTO. ASSN. INTER-INS v. Garamendi, 6 Cal. App. 4th 1409, 8 Cal. Rptr. 2d 366 (Cal. Ct. App. 1992).

Opinion

6 Cal.App.4th 1409 (1992)
8 Cal. Rptr.2d 366

CALIFORNIA STATE AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION INTER-INSURANCE BUREAU, Plaintiff and Appellant,
v.
JOHN GARAMENDI, as Insurance Commissioner, etc., Defendant and Respondent; CALIFORNIA AUTOMOBILE ASSIGNED RISK PLAN, Real Party in Interest and Respondent; ALLSTATE INSURANCE COMPANY et al., Interveners and Respondents. CALIFORNIA STATE AUTOMOBILE ASSOCIATION INTER-INSURANCE BUREAU, Plaintiff and Appellant,
v.
JOHN GARAMENDI, as Insurance Commissioner, etc., Defendant and Respondent; CALIFORNIA AUTOMOBILE ASSIGNED RISK PLAN, Real Party in Interest and Respondent.

Docket Nos. A049925, A049887.

Court of Appeals of California, First District, Division Two.

May 29, 1992.

*1412 COUNSEL

Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro, Robert M. Westberg, Reginald D. Steer, Kevin M. Fong and Robert C. Phelps for Plaintiff and Appellant.

Munger, Tolles & Olson and Ronald K. Meyer for Interveners and Respondents.

John K. Van de Kamp and Daniel E. Lungren, Attorneys General, and Joyce E. Hee, Deputy Attorney General, for Defendant and Respondent.

LeBoeuf, Lamb, Leiby & MacRae, James R. Woods, Sanford Kingsley and Thomas E. McDonald for Real Party in Interest and Respondent.

Buchalter, Nemer, Fields & Younger, Jonathan F. Bank, Marcus M. Kaufman and Hugh A. Linstrom as Amici Curiae on behalf of Real Party in Interest and Respondent.

OPINION

PETERSON, J.

In these consolidated appeals, we affirm orders of the former Insurance Commissioner (Commissioner) and trial court which (1) *1413 required the appellant insurer to accept assignment of automobile insurance risks on a statewide basis; and (2) created, and thereafter suspended prospectively, a special Urban Credit Program for risk assignments in certain urban areas. These actions of the Commissioner were consistent with her statutory duties, were neither arbitrary nor capricious, and were supported by substantial evidence in the administrative record.

I. FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

Before discussing the merits, we will first briefly summarize (a) the most relevant statutes and regulations governing the assignment of automobile risks, in order to provide necessary background; (b) the actions of the Commissioner which are in issue here; and (c) the procedural background of these appeals.

A. The Assigned Risk Plan

The California Automobile Assigned Risk Plan (CAARP) was originally created by the Legislature to provide insurance to "those marginal motorists who, because they were considered `bad risks,' were otherwise unable to secure and maintain such insurance." These persons included "`violators of traffic laws, ... persons with minor physical disabilities, the young and the old drivers, and, of course, those who had bad accident records.' (Cal. State Auto. [etc. Bureau v. Downey (1950) 96 Cal. App.2d 876,] 881-882 [216 P.2d 882].) To this extent the plan complements the state's financial responsibility laws by providing a limited fund of insurance to compensate persons injured by drivers who otherwise would be uninsurable." (Nipper v. California Auto. Assigned Risk Plan (1977) 19 Cal.3d 35, 41 [136 Cal. Rptr. 854, 560 P.2d 743].)

Insurance Code[1] section 11620 gives the Commissioner a mandate to design and implement a "reasonable plan for the equitable apportionment" of assigned risks among insurers. In general, insurers receive their "equitable" assignments of drivers based upon a ratio or quota, theoretically derived from the percentage of voluntary liability policies they write in the state. (Cal. Code Regs., tit. 10, § 2445.) After a particular driver is assigned to an insurer pursuant to a "reasonable" plan, the insurer is required to issue a policy to the driver. (Cal. State Auto. etc. Bureau v. Downey (1950) 96 Cal. App.2d 876, 884-885 [216 P.2d 882], affirmed sub nom. California Auto. Assn. v. Maloney (1951) 341 U.S. 105 [95 L.Ed. 788, 71 S.Ct. 601].)

Unfortunately, there are obvious inherent conflicts in this statutory scheme, which reflect the underlying problems which the Legislature sought *1414 to remedy by its creation. The reason insurers would not cover certain drivers in the first place was because those drivers were not profitable to insure at any price the drivers could pay, and any insurer which voluntarily accepted these drivers in large numbers at lower rates could be driven out of business. Certain legal issues related to this conundrum are now pending before our Supreme Court (cf., e.g., California Auto. Assigned Risk Plan v. Gillespie (1991) 235 Cal. App.3d 1825 [280 Cal. Rptr. 217], review granted July 24, 1991 (S016766)); those issues are irrelevant here except to the extent that they reflect the pressures faced by the Commissioner in attempting to fashion a reasonable plan for the equitable assignment of risks.

The Legislature directs the Commissioner to mediate this inherent conflict, by forcing insurers to share among themselves, in an "equitable" and "reasonable" way, the burdens of covering these drivers at low rates. One unintended result of this statutory scheme may be that every insurer has an increased incentive to avoid covering assigned risks, and seeks to shift those assigned risks to other insurers while covering only voluntary, profitable risks; it would be the job of the Commissioner, as defined by the Legislature, to try to defeat such a strategy and devise a reasonable method of equitably distributing to insurers certain lines of business which they might prefer not to handle.

B. The Commissioner's Orders

1. Statewide Assignment

In 1987, problems in the assignment of risks — specifically, the continuing increase in the number of assigned risks in Southern California — led the Commissioner to institute a new method of statewide, random risk assignment which is in issue here.

Prior to this 1987 action, appellant California State Automobile Association Inter-Insurance Bureau (Bureau) had not been accepting, for about five years, its allotted portion of the state's assigned risks. The Bureau had traditionally accepted only assignments of risks from Northern and Central California, its preferred area of operations; most of the assigned risks awaiting distribution were from Southern California. As a result, the Bureau was apparently not doing its allotted part in meeting this statewide need.

Further, for unrelated actuarial reasons, insurers were losing more money on their Southern California assigned risk business than in other areas. It was concluded that the Bureau was not taking its share of this undesirable business — a situation which caused disproportionate losses to other insurers.

*1415 In order to remedy these problems, in 1987, the Commissioner approved a new approach, the statewide assignment of risks. The new rules provided that the Bureau could no longer turn down Southern California risks; all the state's assigned risk drivers would be randomly assigned to insurers in proportion to their business conducted in the state, on a statewide basis.

2. The Urban Credit Program

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6 Cal. App. 4th 1409, 8 Cal. Rptr. 2d 366, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/california-st-auto-assn-inter-ins-v-garamendi-calctapp-1992.