Maria Cameron v. Nationwide General Insurance et al. (2013)

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION

Nationwide General Insurance (Nationwide) moves for summary judgment in this underinsured motorist claim action filed by the plaintiff, Maria Cameron.

Summary judgment shall be granted if the pleadings and documentary proof submitted demonstrate that no genuine dispute as to material facts exists and that the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law, Practice Book § 17–49.

The court's review of the pleadings and documentary proof submitted discloses that the following facts are undisputed.   On April 20, 2011, the plaintiff was a social worker employed by the Connecticut Department of Children and Families.   While the plaintiff drove her own vehicle to and from her main work place in Hartford, when she was required to travel away from the Hartford office she drove a state-owned car which she selected from a pool of cars.   On that date, she chose a Ford Focus from the fleet of available cars so that she could go to Milford on DCF business.

As she drove southbound on Interstate 95, a vehicle driven by Bara Mbengue struck the rear of the Ford Focus causing injuries to the plaintiff.   Mbengue's insurance was insufficient to compensate the plaintiff fully for those injuries, and she invokes the underinsured motorist provision of her personal automobile insurance contract with Nationwide to supply the shortfall.

When the plaintiff selected a state car in order to perform her job, she did not always choose the same car.   However, she had used the same Ford Focus on occasion before April 20, 2011.   The protocol involved retrieving the car keys and filling out a form each day a state car was driven.   The state is a self-insurer of the Ford Focus and is also a defendant in this case.

Nationwide contends that the UIM coverage set forth in the plaintiff's contract expressly excludes such coverage for the plaintiff when she operated the state's car when the accident occurred.   The UIM—bodily injury section of the policy contains a subsection entitled “Coverage Exclusion.”   That subsection states that no UIM coverage exists for “[b]odily injury suffered by you ․ while occupying a motor vehicle ․ b) furnished to;  or c) available for the regular use [by you] of” an automobile not insured under the policy, such as the state-owned car.

No genuine factual controversy exists as to whether the state routinely made available to the plaintiff a state-owned car to accomplish the tasks within the scope of her work for DCF. The fact that the car was returned to a state facility each day and that a different vehicle was utilized on different days is immaterial to the exclusion provision.   As a matter of law, Nationwide is entitled to judgment, and the motion is granted.

Sferrazza, S.J.

Sferrazza, Samuel J., S.J.