While I always hesitate to comment on coverage issues unless I’ve read all of the policies involved and compared them to the facts of the occurrence, this sounds like it probably should have been a no-brainer.
Unless there was some non-standard wording in the policies, the pick-up owner’s PRIMARY policy and the driver’s PRIMARY policy should have been compared to each other, and considered pro-rata primary for a combined total primary limits of $550,000.
I would suspect the wording of the owner’s umbrella policy required the exhaustion of the primary limits of the policy it was written over. Those primary limits would exhaust along with the driver’s policy limits, and only if the driver’s primary limits were exhausted. Thus, the owner’s umbrella could not come in to play until the full $50,000 was paid.
It surprises me, again assuming that the policy wording was standard stuff and the facts weren’t too convoluted, that this needed to be litigated.
But then, my lawyer friends tell me that they don’t teach thsi stuff at law school, and I know that on the carrier side, the number of coverage geeks, such as myself, is getting smaller and smaller.
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While I always hesitate to comment on coverage issues unless I’ve read all of the policies involved and compared them to the facts of the occurrence, this sounds like it probably should have been a no-brainer.
Unless there was some non-standard wording in the policies, the pick-up owner’s PRIMARY policy and the driver’s PRIMARY policy should have been compared to each other, and considered pro-rata primary for a combined total primary limits of $550,000.
I would suspect the wording of the owner’s umbrella policy required the exhaustion of the primary limits of the policy it was written over. Those primary limits would exhaust along with the driver’s policy limits, and only if the driver’s primary limits were exhausted. Thus, the owner’s umbrella could not come in to play until the full $50,000 was paid.
It surprises me, again assuming that the policy wording was standard stuff and the facts weren’t too convoluted, that this needed to be litigated.
But then, my lawyer friends tell me that they don’t teach thsi stuff at law school, and I know that on the carrier side, the number of coverage geeks, such as myself, is getting smaller and smaller.