A recent decision from a federal appeals court located in Pennsylvania serves as an example of just how complicated auto insurance issues can become.
The case revolved around whether the uninsured motorist coverage provided by a man’s
Pennsylvania car insurance policy should pay for the injuries he sustained while swerving to avoid a cardboard box in the middle of a highway.
At issue in the case was whether or not the man’s injuries arose out of an uninsured/unidentified driver’s use of a car.
The policyholder claimed that since he and the insurer presumed that the box got there by falling off of an unidentified vehicle, the injury ultimately had its origins in the unidentified motorist’s driving a car and should be covered under the policy.
But the insurer argued that because it was the box that caused the accident and not the car that had been transporting it, the facts of the incident did not qualify it for coverage under his insurance policy.
While the lower district court ruled in favor of the insurer—saying that it was indeed the box and not the unidentified car that caused the accident—the 3rd U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the decision.
It its opinion, the appeals court cited a number of cases for precedent in which other courts had ruled that some injuries directly caused by objects other than cars were nonetheless said to have arisen out of the use of cars.
One of the cases that they cited involved a case in which the court ruled valid the auto insurance claim of a woman who tripped in her living room over some debris that ended up there after a car had driven through her living room.
Another case cited by the court was one in which a metal trash can rolled off of a flatbed truck and injured a worker. In that case, the worker’s claim was also found to have been valid under a car insurance policy.
