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Omni Insurance Company v. Foreman5/11/2001
Omni Insurance Company appeals from the trial court's denial of its postjudgment motion for a judgment as a matter of law ("JML"), for a new trial, or to alter or amend a judgment entered on a jury verdict in favor of Jennifer B. Foreman. We affirm.
I. Underlying Facts and Course of the Proceedings
On May 22, 1998, at approximately 11:00 p.m., John Edward Brock was driving a pickup truck owned by his mother, Amy W. Quall, on Monroe County Road 27 west of Monroeville. He ran a stop sign at the intersection of County Road 27 and U.S. Highway 84; his vehicle collided with an automobile on Highway 84 driven by Jennifer B. Foreman, who was on her way home from her job in a clothing factory. John testified that he "wasn't paying attention to the road or playing with the radio" and that when he looked up, he saw Foreman's automobile coming, but that it was too late to stop. Although John was only 17 years old, he had been drinking beer with friends, two of whom were passengers in his vehicle. Tests made after the accident revealed that John had a blood-alcohol level of .06%. He later pleaded guilty to DUI charges.
The impact of the collision caused Foreman's automobile to flip in the air and land on the opposite side of the highway. Various parts of Foreman's body were cut and bruised in the collision. She also suffered a torn meniscus in her left knee (the meniscus is the cartilage behind the kneecap). Foreman was transported by ambulance to Monroe County Hospital, where she was treated; she was released the following morning. She later had arthroscopic surgery on her left knee. Her medical bills totaled $7,769.03.
Foreman sued John and his mother, alleging that John had negligently or wantonly caused or allowed the vehicle owned by his mother to collide with Foreman's vehicle, thereby injuring her. John was insured under an automobile liability policy with limits of $50,000. Foreman and her husband were insured under three automobile liability policies with Omni Insurance Company. Each of those policies provided uninsured/underinsured-motorist ("UIM") coverage with limits of $20,000, for a total of $60,000 in UIM benefits available to Foreman and her husband. Foreman later amended her complaint to add Omni as a defendant and to state against that defendant a breach-of-contract claim. She sought to recover from Omni UIM benefits to which she contended she was entitled.
The trial court entered a summary judgment in favor of Amy Quall. John's insurer settled Foreman's claims against him for $42,500. Omni had advance notice of the settlement and consented to it. Foreman then proceeded against Omni alone. Her claim against Omni was tried before a jury.
Before the trial, Omni moved to strike Foreman's claim for punitive damages, arguing that permitting Foreman to seek punitive damages against her own UIM carrier would not serve the purposes for which punitive damages are allowed. Omni states in its brief that the trial court denied its motion to strike, but it explains in a footnote that " he [trial] court never expressly ruled on motion to strike, but it submitted Foreman's claim for punitive damages to the jury and thus implicitly denied the motion."
At trial, Omni moved for a JML at the close of Foreman's case and again at the close of all the evidence. In both motions, Omni argued that Foreman's complaint should be dismissed in its entirety because she had settled with John for less than the limits of his policy and thus had failed to exhaust the limits of John's liability coverage; that Foreman's claim for punitive damages should be dismissed because assessing punitive damages against her own insurance company would punish th
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