Wisconsin Court Sides with Insurer on Denying Underinsured Motorist Coverage

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled in favor of an insurance company that argued that the underinsured motorists endorsement to a farmer’s business auto policy applies to an injured family member only if he was in a covered vehicle.

Jonathan Lisowski was injured in 2004 when an underinsured driver hit his family’s Dodge Avenger. He claimed he should be covered under the underinsured motorists clause of a Hastings Mutual Insurance Co. insurance policy on his father’s Mack semi-tractor.

Hastings Mutual denied the claim. Now five justices have endorsed the insurer’s view and upheld lower court rulings that the Dodge was not covered under the tractor policy. The opinion was written by Justice N. Patrick Crooks.

Justice Ann Walsh Bradley dissented, maintaining that underinsured motorist coverage has always applied to family members regardless of which vehicle they were in during an accident.

The Lisowski family had multiple personal and business vehicles insured under policies from three companies. Dennis Lisowski, a farmer, owned a Chevy Lumina, a Chevy pickup, a Dodge Avenger, and a Mack semi-tractor. He bought policies for the Lumina and the pickup from First Community Insurance Co. but allowed them to lapse. He had purchased the Dodge for his son, Jonathan, who bought insurance for it from Northern Progressive but bought no UIM coverage. The Mack semi-tractor, which was used exclusively for farming, was covered by a business auto policy issued by Hastings Mutual, which had a UIM endorsement.

Jonathan Lisowski was a passenger in a car accident involving the Dodge, and a friend of his was driving. Jonathan Lisowski claimed coverage under the UIM endorsement to the business auto policy on his father’s semi-tractor on the grounds that, as a family member of the named insured, he was entitled to coverage for any injury caused by an underinsured motorist.

Hastings Mutual denied coverage on the grounds that the UIM policy applied to covered autos only.

The Buffalo County Circuit Court found that the Dodge was not a covered auto in the Hastings Mutual policy and concluded that the UIM endorsement required Jonathan Lisowski to be an occupant of a covered auto in order to trigger UIM coverage.

Jonathan Lisowski appealed this and a later decision in the insurer’s favor all the way to the state Supreme Court. But his result was no different.

What the parties disputed was whether Jonathan Lisowski was entitled to coverage as an insured regardless of where he was at the time he was injured by the underinsured motorist.

Jonathan Lisowski advanced a half-dozen reasons his father’s business auto policy should provide coverage, including that the language “for a covered auto” is merely introductory language and not part of the policy.

However the court ruled that the language is part of the policy, and an important part. “The ‘for a covered auto’ language on which this case turns is substantive language that appears in several places in the policy, including the endorsement page. When the provisions of the policy are read together, the language is not ambiguous,” the decision said.