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Levine v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co.3/8/2004
only to payments a plaintiff receives from the uninsured motorist.").
I note that we previously recognized such an interpretation of section 2902(4) in dicta. Young v. Greater Portland Transit Dist., 535 A.2d 417, 420 (Me. 1987). In Young, we recognized that an insurance company's subrogation rights could be "impair " when an injured uninsured motorist is "legally entitled" to payment from the insurance company, yet the claimant is barred from asserting a cause of action against the owner of the uninsured vehicle who caused the injury because the applicable tort statute of limitations had expired. Id. This observation was implicitly premised on the notion, which I would make clear, that the insurer's statutory subrogation rights were extinguished once the limitations period expired on the claimant's cause of action because the company lost its subrogation rights once the claimant was unable to receive proceeds from the tortfeasor. See id. (" he insurer has other means available to it to protect [its subrogation] rights. In any event, subrogation rights are generally of little practical importance in this area of the law.").
Finally, my interpretation of section 2902(4) also comports with the uninsured vehicle statute's overall objective of ensuring that the injured insured receives full satisfaction of damages to which he or she is entitled before the insurance company's subrogation rights are implicated. Wescott, 397 A.2d at 169 ("In view of the fact that [the uninsured vehicle statute] must be construed liberally in favor of the insured victim and strictly against the insurer, [section 2902(4)] must be given that narrow interpretation which favors full satisfaction by the insured victim of his damages to which he is legally entitled to recover from the owners or operators of the uninsured vehicle before the right of subrogation attaches.").
Insurance companies have generally acknowledged section 2902(4)'s limitation on offsets by including language in their policy that only permits reductions for damages "paid" by the owner or operator of the uninsured or underinsured vehicle responsible for causing the claimant's bodily injury. See, e.g., Saucier v. Allstate Ins. Co., 1999 ME 197, 1 n.1, 742 A.2d 482, 484 ("'Damages payable will be reduced by . . . all amounts paid by the owner or operator of the uninsured auto or anyone else responsible.'") (quoting Saucier's insurance policy) (emphasis added). Unlike those policies, however, State Farm's policy contravenes section 2902(4) because it attempts to create an offset for "any amount . . . payable," and for the "total of the bodily injury limits of all other vehicle liability policies or bonds that apply" to the "legally liable" party, regardless of whether the party responsible for causing the injury pays the uninsured motorist any proceeds. (Emphasis added.)
In light of the foregoing, State Farm's subrogation rights in this case never attached because Levine never received payment from Kruzynski or Kruzynski's liability carrier. See 24-A M.R.S.A. § 2902(4); Tibbetts, 618 A.2d at 734. State Farm is therefore not entitled to the $50,000 offset, and the limit-reduction clause contained in its uninsured motorist coverage is unenforceable to the extent that it permits an offset when the injured party does not receive payment from the party responsible for causing the claimant's bodily injury.
In its conclusion, the Court suggests that, if my analysis is adopted, "the economic risks of injury in motor vehicle accidents would shift entirely to the underinsured vehicle coverage carrier." The circumstances of this case are too unique to draw sweeping conclusions from it. I note, however, that the Legisl
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