Philadelphia Judge States That the Motor Vehicle Financial Responsibility Law Aims To Protect Insurers and Not the Insured
According to a December 4, 2009 article in the Philadelphia Legal Intelligencer, a Philadelphia judge denied Matthew J. Adamitis uninsured motorist benefits from his personal insurer, Erie Insurance Exchange, after he had an accident in a work vehicle. The judge ruled that the public policy goal of the Motor Vehicle Financial Responsibility Law is not to protect the insured but the insurer. Adamitis argued that denying a worker underinsured motorist coverage by his private insurer when his work did not purchase UIM coverage was contrary to the public policy goals of the MVFRL. Judge Frederica A. Messiah-Jackson stated that the regular use exclusion in Adamitis’ insurance policy was not against public policy. According the judge’s opinion, “The purpose and policy of the MVFRL is not to protect employees, rather UIM functions to protect insurers against forced underwriting of unknown risks that insureds have neither disclosed nor paid to insure.”
While Judge Messiah-Jackson’s opinion is consistent with hundreds of other similar Appellate Court rules on the issue, attorneys in the case commented that it comes down on the opposite side of a ruling in an Allegheny County Common Pleas Court that was issued a month earlier. In that case, Ciminel v. Erie Insurance Exchange, Judge Timothy P. O’Reilly issued a one page Order granting a Motion for Summary Judgment ordering Erie to pay Ciminel’s UIM benefits. Judge O’Reilly wrote in that Order that he was persuaded by a 2007 Opinion out of Lackawanna County in Decker v. Nationwide Insurance Company. In that case John Decker was a police officer injured by an underinsured motorist while driving his cruiser. The attorney for the insurance company stated that it was important that the Judge in the Adamitis case found that the exclusion was both valid and enforceable. More details of this case can be found in the case of Adamitis v. Erie Insurance Exchange.
