Underinsured Motorist Coverage – Insurance Policy

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7^th Circuit Court of Appeals

Case Name: Eric Trotter et al v. Harleysville Insurance Company

Case No.: 15-3654

Officials: EASTERBROOK and SYKES, Circuit Judges, and ADELMAN, District Judge.* ADELMAN, District Judge

Focus: Underinsured Motorist Coverage – Insurance Policy

Insurance policy clearly states $500,000 limitation on coverage per accident.

“In arguing that the policy is ambiguous, the plaintiffs point to various aspects of the policy language that they believe create uncertainty over which “limit of liability” paragraph is controlling—the one in the Illinois endorsement or the one in the single-limit endorsement. We conclude that the policy is unambiguous and that the paragraph in the single-limit endorsement controls. But even if there were ambiguity over which paragraph is controlling, we could not resolve the ambiguity in a way that removes the per-accident limit. That is because both paragraphs state that coverage is subject to a $500,000 per-accident maximum, regardless of the number of insureds involved in the accident. The only difference between the two paragraphs is that the one in the Illinois endorsement contains a per-person limit in addition to the per-accident limit. Thus, even if we thought that an ambiguity in the policy language required that we disregard the single-limit endorsement and enforce the Illinois endorsement as written (which we do not), the limit for underinsured motorist coverage would still be $500,000 per accident”

Affirmed

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