Schultz v. Illinois Farmers Insurance Company

CourtIllinois Supreme Court
DecidedMarch 18, 2010
Docket108038 Rel
StatusPublished

This text of Schultz v. Illinois Farmers Insurance Company (Schultz v. Illinois Farmers Insurance Company) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Illinois Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Schultz v. Illinois Farmers Insurance Company, (Ill. 2010).

Opinion

Docket No. 108038.

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS

KENNETH W. SCHULTZ, Appellee, v. ILLINOIS FARMERS INSURANCE COMPANY, Appellant.–ILLINOIS FARMERS INSURANCE COMPANY, Appellant, v. BARBARA WEGLARZ e t al., Appellees.

Opinion filed March 18, 2010.

JUSTICE KARMEIER delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. Chief Justice Fitzgerald and Justices Freeman, Thomas, Kilbride, Garman, and Burke concurred in the judgment and opinion.

OPINION

Before us in this appeal are two actions for declaratory judgment presenting a single issue: does Illinois law permit insurers to issue motor vehicle liability policies in which occupants of a covered vehicle are afforded uninsured motorist (UM) coverage but excluded from underinsured (UIM) coverage? Both actions involved motor vehicle liability policies containing provisions which purported to eliminate UIM coverage for occupants by defining “insureds” more narrowly under the policies’ UIM provisions than they did for purposes of liability and UM coverage. In the first case, Schultz v. Illinois Farmers Insurance Co., the circuit court of Cook County upheld the exclusion of occupants from UIM coverage and granted summary judgment in favor of the insurance company. In the second case, Illinois Farmers Insurance Co. v. Weglarz, the court found that the attempt to exclude occupants from UIM coverage was rendered ineffective by ambiguity in the policy. On appeal, the appellate court held that the policy provisions excluding occupants from UIM coverage contravene section 143a–2 of the Illinois Insurance Code (215 ILCS 5/143a–2 (West 2002)) and are therefore void and unenforceable. Based on this conclusion, it reversed the judgment in favor of the insurance company in the Schultz case and affirmed the judgment in favor of the insured in the Weglarz case. 387 Ill. App. 3d 622. We granted the insurance company’s petition for leave to appeal. 210 Ill. 2d R. 315. For the reasons that follow, we now affirm the appellate court’s judgment and remand to the circuit court for further proceedings.

BACKGROUND The Schultz litigation arose from an automobile accident which occurred in August of 2005. In the accident, a vehicle driven by Kathleen O’Conner and owned by Herbert and Alvina Hummelberg was struck by a vehicle driven by Alexandria Fotopoulos. Patricia Smetana was a passenger in O’Conner’s car. Neither she nor O’Conner was related to the Hummelbergs. Both were injured. Smetana ultimately died of her injuries. Following Smetana’s death, the circuit court appointed Kenneth Schultz independent administrator of her estate. At the time of the accident, Fotopolous’ vehicle was covered by a motor vehicle liability policy issued by Illinois Farmers Insurance Company (Farmers) and governed by the laws of Illinois. The policy contained liability limits of $100,000 per person and $300,000 per accident. Farmers settled with both O’Conner and Smetana’s estate for the policy limits. The Hummelbergs’ vehicle was also insured by Farmers, but had higher coverage limits of $250,000 per person and $500,000 per

-2- accident for bodily injury, UM coverage, and UIM coverage.1 O’Conner and Smetana’s estate each filed claims against Farmers requesting additional compensation under the policy’s UIM provisions. Those claims were denied based on policy language pertaining to UIM coverage. For purposes of UM coverage, the policy defined an “insured person” as the person to whom the policy was issued, a family member, or “[a]ny other person while occupying the car described in the policy.” With respect to UIM coverage, however, the definition of “insured person” omitted occupants of the car. The policy purported to limit UIM coverage to the person to whom the policy was issued or a family member.2 Because O’Connor and Smetana were not among the persons to whom the Hummelbergs’ policy had been issued and were not members of the family of any such person, they could not meet the UIM provision’s more restrictive definition. For this reason, their claims were denied. Believing the policy’s disparate definitions of “insured persons” failed to meet the requirements of Illinois law, Schultz, as administrator of Smetana’s estate, and O’Conner brought an action in the circuit court of Cook County pursuant to section 2–701 of the

1 Both the Hummelbergs’ policy and the Farmers policy involved in the Weglarz litigation contained “step-down” provisions which reduced liability coverage for permissive users of covered vehicles to the minimums required by Illinois law. Although we previously held that such step-down provisions did not offend the public policy of this state (State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. v. Illinois Farmers Insurance Co., 226 Ill. 2d 395 (2007), legislation which took effect January 1, 2008, now requires that all policies for private passenger automobiles provide “the same limits of bodily injury liability, property damage liability, uninsured and underinsured motorist bodily injury, and medical payments coverage to all persons insured under that policy, whether or not an insured person is a named insured or permissive user under the policy.” 215 ILCS 5/143.13a (West 2008). 2 Though not relevant here, the UM and UIM provisions also both covered any other person “for damages that person is entitled to recover because of bodily injury” to individuals who qualified as “insureds” under the respective provisions. That is also true of the policy in the Weglarz case.

-3- Code of Civil Procedure (735 ILCS 5/2–701 (West 2002)) to obtain a declaration that the UIM provision’s more restrictive definition violated Illinois law and was unenforceable and that the $250,000 in UIM coverage should therefore be available to them under the policy. Farmers filed a counterclaim, asking that the policy provisions be upheld. Smetana’s estate and O’Conner moved for summary judgment (735 ILCS 5/2–1005 (West 2002)) on their claim. Farmers, in turn, moved for summary judgment on its counterclaim. Before the court ruled on those motions, Farmers voluntarily agreed to recognize the UIM claim submitted by O’Conner, leaving only the claim submitted by Smetana’s estate in dispute. Following a hearing, the circuit court granted summary judgment in favor of Farmers and against Smetana’s estate. In the court’s view, omission of a vehicle’s occupants from the definition of “insured” for purposes of UIM coverage did not violate Illinois law and precluded the estate from recovering under the UIM provisions of the Hummelbergs’ policy. With respect to the Weglarz case, the record shows that in January of 2005, Barbara Weglarz was riding in a sport utility vehicle owned by Krysztof and Jolanta Majchrowicz and driven by Jolanta. The vehicle, which was insured by Farmers, was struck by a car driven by Galyna Kovalyz. Kovalyz’s car was insured by Allstate pursuant to a policy that carried a bodily injury liability limit of $25,000 per person. Weglarz suffered serious injuries as a result of the collision, and Allstate tendered Kovalyz’s policy’s full $25,000 policy limits to her. Believing this sum was insufficient to full compensate her for her injuries, Weglarz made a claim to Farmers under the UIM provisions of the policy it had issued on the Majchrowicz’s vehicle. That policy provided UIM coverage in the amount of $50,000 per person and $100,000 per occurrence, the same limits specified in the policy for liability and UM coverage. As with the Farmers insurance policy at issue in the Schultz litigation, the definition of an “insured” in the UM provisions of the policy relevant to Weglarz’s claim included occupants of the vehicle.

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Schultz v. Illinois Farmers Insurance Company, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/schultz-v-illinois-farmers-insurance-company-ill-2010.