Mitchell v. Prudential Property & Casualty Insurance

499 A.2d 632, 346 Pa. Super. 327, 1985 Pa. Super. LEXIS 8751
CourtSupreme Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedOctober 4, 1985
Docket1788
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 499 A.2d 632 (Mitchell v. Prudential Property & Casualty Insurance) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Mitchell v. Prudential Property & Casualty Insurance, 499 A.2d 632, 346 Pa. Super. 327, 1985 Pa. Super. LEXIS 8751 (Pa. 1985).

Opinions

CERCONE, Judge:

The parties are before this court upon the lower court’s denial of appellant’s petition to compel a second arbitration hearing, involving an automobile accident in which appellant was involved, in pursuance of a claim against a party different than the one he brought suit against in the first arbitration proceedings. Appellant was involved in the automobile accident at an intersection with an identified and insured driver whom appellant averred was the cause of the accident. Subsequently an arbitration panel trying the case between appellant and the identified and insured driver rendered an award in favor of the driver and against appellant.1 Appellant now seeks to pursue a second arbitration hearing claiming compensation under the uninsured motorist clause of his automobile policy with Prudential Property and Casualty Insurance Company (Prudential) on the grounds that a parked truck, obstructing his view of the intersection where the accident happened, caused him to collide with the other car. He alleges the identity of the driver of the parked truck was not possible because he blacked out in the accident. The lower court in an opinion authored by Judge White of the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas stated that appellant’s policy, in its uninsured motorist provision, provided for hit-and-run situations and did not contemplate an unidentified parked vehicle and accordingly denied appellant’s petition to compel arbitration a second time. We reverse.

The insurance policy under which appellant was insured provides uninsured motorist coverage under the following conditions:

If you’ve paid for this coverage (see Declarations Page), we’ll pay you the amount you should have collected as [331]*331damages for bodily injury from the person or organization responsible for the car accident in which you are injured, but only when you could not collect because:
The person or organization responsible for the accident has no liability insurance or had inadequate (less than the amount required by your state’s financial responsibility law) liability insurance coverage at the time of the accident.
The person or organization responsible for the accident has adequate liability insurance coverage at the time of the accident, but, for some reason, the company writing the insurance denies coverage.
Neither the driver nor the owner of the car which caused injury by hitting a person insured under this part (or by hitting a car that person was occupying at the time of the accident) can be identified.

Appellee, Prudential, contends that appellant’s claim falls under the last paragraph, supra, of the uninsured motorist provision and that this paragraph applies only to hit-and-run situations. Appellant argues that the Uninsured Motorist Coverage Act2 is designed to insure compensation to one who is injured through the fault of any driver who cannot respond in damage for injuries and that furthermore, contact is not necessary so long as the claimant can prove that there was another culpable vehicle involved.

[332]*332Initially we note that Pennsylvania courts have consistently declared that the Uninsured Motorist Coverage Act be liberally construed in order to achieve the intent of our legislature to provide monetary protection to persons who, while lawfully using the highways, have suffered injury at the hands of an irresponsible driver. See, Estate of Rosato v. Harleysville Mutual Insurance Company, 328 Pa.Super. 278, 476 A.2d 1328 (1984); Pattani v. Keystone Insurance Company, 426 Pa. 332, 231 A.2d 402 (1967). However, because an unscrupulous driver could claim that his injuries are the result of an unidentifiable driver’s negligence when in fact he is at fault, many states incorporate provisions in their uninsured motorist insurance act that limit the coverage to bodily injury that arises out of physical contact between a hit-and-run vehicle and a claimant’s car. Such provisions are intended to prevent fraud. By requiring that there be physical contact when the identity of the offending motorist is unknown legislators sought to foreclose claims arising from accidents allegedly caused by unidentifiable drivers but which in reality had resulted from the the driver’s own acts of negligence. 1. Widiss, Uninsured and Underinsured Motorist Insurance, p. 326 § 92, (2d ed. 1985). Pennsylvania has not adopted this position. In Webb v. United States Automobile Association, 227 Pa.Super. 508, 323 A.2d 737 (1974) this court addressed the issue of whether the “physical contact” requirement was repugnant to the Uninsured Motorist Coverage Act. Our court concluded that:

While it would certainly eliminate the possibility of fraud to hold the physical contact clause valid, it would also eliminate any hope of recovery in cases clearly involving another negligent motorist who has avoided liability by getting away. This latter situation is surely within the contemplation of the Uninsured Motorist Coverage Act, and the possibility of fraud can be mitigated by the burden of proof placed on the claimant. If the injured party can sustain the burden of proof that an accident did occur, he should be entitled to recover, regardless of the actuality of physical contact.

[333]*333Furthermore, insurance companies are insulated from the burden of untrammeled fraudulent claims when the burden of proof to show that an unidentifiable vehicle was the cause of an accident is placed on the proponent of the claim. Gerardi v. Harleysville Insurance Company, 293 Pa.Super. 375, 439 A.2d 160 (1981).

Under Webb, supra, Pennsylvania’s Uninsured Motorist Coverage Act includes accidents which are caused by a driver whose vehicle did not come in contact with a claimant’s car. Here we must decide Prudential’s contention that appellant’s failure to claim in his first arbitration that an unidentifiable parked vehicle obscured his vision so that he collided with another car precludes a second arbitration under the uninsured motorist provision of appellant’s policy.

Thus we must decide whether appellant can receive compensation for his injuries under both the no-fault and the uninsured motorist provisions of his policy. If double recovery is allowed then a further question arises as to whether appellant had to advance his uninsured motorist claim at the first arbitration when the no-fault provisions of his policy were litigated.

In keeping with the legislative mandate of liberal construction of the Uninsured Motorist Coverage Act our courts have demonstrated a propensity for deciding that a party can receive benefits under both the no-fault and uninsured motorist protection of his automobile insurance policy, so long as these benefits are not duplicated. (See infra). In State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company v. Williams, 481 Pa. 130, 392 A.2d 281 (1978) our Supreme Court concluded that

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Mitchell v. Prudential Property & Casualty Insurance
499 A.2d 632 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1985)

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Bluebook (online)
499 A.2d 632, 346 Pa. Super. 327, 1985 Pa. Super. LEXIS 8751, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mitchell-v-prudential-property-casualty-insurance-pa-1985.