Davis v. Travelers Property Casualty Co. of America

Not for Publication in West's Federal Reporter
United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 10-2023
PAUL DAVIS AND SARAH K. DAVIS,
Plaintiffs, Appellants,
v.
TRAVELERS PROPERTY CASUALTY COMPANY OF AMERICA,
Defendant, Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MAINE
[Hon. D. Brock Hornby, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Boudin, Circuit Judge,
Souter, Associate Justice,*
and Selya, Circuit Judge.
John A. Hobson, with whom Perkins Thompson, P.A. was on
brief, for appellants.
Lance E. Walker, with whom Norman, Hanson & Detroy, LLC was
on brief, for appellee.
October 3, 2011
*
The Hon. David H. Souter, Associate Justice (Ret.) of the
Supreme Court of the United States, sitting by designation.
SOUTER, Associate Justice. This is a meritless appeal
from the district court’s summary judgment for the defendant
Travelers Property Casualty Company of America on an underinsured
motorist coverage claim brought by Paul Davis and his spouse.
Davis was the manager of both the Maine and New Hampshire offices
of Océ USA Holding, Inc., a subsidiary of a multinational
corporation. He lived in Maine, where he kept a company car that
was insured under a multistate policy issued by Travelers, by the
terms of which he was an insured. While driving in New Hampshire
on his way to the company office there, a driver conceded to be
underinsured under the policy definition smashed into him and
caused severe injury.
The terms and extent of legally required or conventional
coverage against damage by uninsured and underinsured drivers vary
from state to state, and business policies addressing multistate
activity deal with the variety by separate endorsements, subject to
selection and application in a given case according to the terms of
the policy. Here, if the Maine endorsement applies, coverage is
limited to $100,000 (much less than Davis’s claims), whereas the
New Hampshire endorsement would extend the dollar limit to
$5,000,000. The district court held that the Maine terms apply,
and in this de novo review, we agree.
On the thirtieth page of the 562 page policy, this term
appears:
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ITEM TWO
COVERAGE AND LIMITS OF INSURANCE
UNINSURED MOTORISTS COVERAGE AND UNDERINSURED
MOTORISTS COVERAGE
The LIMIT OF INSURANCE for the coverages shown
below is the LIMIT OF INSURANCE shown for the
State where a covered “auto” is principally
garaged. Refer to the specific coverage
endorsement for description of the coverage
provided for each State listed below.
It is undisputed that the insured car was garaged in Maine and
undisputed that the limit of coverage under the Maine endorsement
is $100,000. Since the limit of coverage is the point of
contention, that should be the end of the matter, but the Davises
say that the policy is infected with an ambiguity that entitles
them to the higher New Hampshire limit, under the familiar standard
(about which there is no choice of law issue) that policy language
means what a reasonable insured person would take it to mean, and
that language reasonably susceptible to more than one reading
should be read in favor of the insured. See Peerless Ins. Co. v.
Wood, 685 A.2d 1173, 1174 (Me. 1996).
The Davises’ claim of ambiguity rests on their repeated
assertion that the New Hampshire endorsement provides the terms of
uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, so that a reasonable
reader of the policy would find it perplexing and unlikely that the
dollar limit of such coverage should be set by the Maine
endorsement merely because the car was customarily kept in a Maine
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garage. The assumption that the New Hampshire endorsement applies
is, however, without any foundation.
At the outset, we will agree that the provision quoted
above ties the dollar limit of coverage somewhat more precisely to
the endorsement of the garage state than it ties the substantive
terms of coverage. “The LIMIT OF INSURANCE for the coverages shown
below is the LIMIT OF INSURANCE shown for the state where a covered
‘auto’ is principally garaged.” As to dollar limits, this could
hardly be clearer. Then the provision goes on to tell the reader
to “[r]efer to the specific coverage endorsement for description of
the coverage provided for each State listed below.” True, it does
not expressly provide that the substantive coverage of the garage
state is the applicable coverage, but in sequence from the
preceding sentence it is hard to see how it could mean anything
else. A reasonable reader would look to the Maine endorsement for
both substantive scope and dollar limit.
But even if that reader looked to the New Hampshire
endorsement he would find no language calling for its application
here. The Davises make much of the fact that the New Hampshire
endorsement, unlike the majority of them, does not itself repeat
the “principally garaged” limitation. But that does not reasonably
imply that a car not garaged in New Hampshire is covered by the New
Hampshire terms, and of course it is a far cry from contradicting
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the unequivocal provision that the limit of coverage is that of the
garage state.
The Davises’ only other attempts to show the New
Hampshire endorsement applicable boil down to asserting that Mr.
Davis could naturally expect New Hampshire law to apply because his
accident occurred there, and because he received benefits under the
New Hampshire workers’ compensation law. But it is enough to say
that these two considerations have nothing to do with any term of
the policy in question and engender no ambiguity in its key to
coverage by reference to principal garage state.
There is no reasonable basis for the Davises’ claim, and
the judgment will be affirmed.
Affirmed.
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