Peterson v. Continental Casualty Company

483 P.2d 445, 1971 Utah LEXIS 631, 25 Utah 2d 408

• Court: Utah Supreme Court
• Decided: March 29, 1971
• Docket: 12187
• Status: Published

Opinions

HENRIOD, Justice:

Appeal from what was labeled a summary judgment for plaintiff which actually was a judgment on all available facts, under an insurance policy covering injury “sustained in consequence of being struck by any land conveyance while a pedestrian.” Affirmed, with costs to plaintiff.

Believable evidence elicited under the discovery process indicates that plaintiff’s farmer husband was crushed by a tractor that, driverless, had rolled down a rise, all of which occurred on his private property.

The only question is whether the deceased was a “pedestrian” under the terms of the policy. The trial court said he was,

■ — a conclusion with which we agree, — no one questioning the fact that the tractor was a “land conveyance,” and it appearing that the vehicle, out of gear, simply traveled downhill as mentioned, and quite obviously ran over the deceased.

Appellant indulges a non sequitur by assuming that coverage under the policy is conditioned on a pedestrian’s traveling some place on a public way. The insurance policy could have spelled out such a condition precedent, but it didn’t. To say that a pedestrian is not a pedestrian' if he stops walking is disconsonant with realism and the common connotation of the term. A lot of pedestrians, as we think of them, .many times are injured after they have stopped walking — but they are nonetheless on foot. The word "pedestrian” itself etymologically refers to the foot, or pedal extremity.

Appellant urges that the trial court lent credence to the definition of “pedestrian” found in the Motor Vehicle Code: "Any person afoot,” and hence erred since such definition does not square with the Black Law Dictionary version of “pedestrian” as being “A person traveling on foot,” — reasoning that a pedestrian must be one in motion and that consequently the policy was inapplicable to a “man working on and about an idling farm tractor located on his private property.” It seems to us that the distinction is more forensic than substantive, and it appears to be unrealistic to conclude that the policy would not cover a case where a man, for example, having walked home from work, having walked through his gate and having stopped to take the mail from the mailbox, was injured by a “land conveyance” but would cover a case where, if while still walking he had retrieved the mail before opening his gate.

We believe and hold that under a reasonable interpretation of what we think is a fairly certain word of rather common connotation, applied to the circumstances of this particular case, the deceased was a “pedestrian” ánd his death was covered by the terms of the policy.

CALLISTER, C. J., and TUCKETT, and CROCKETT, JJ., concur.