Section 6.12 Damages Incurred While Occupying Insured Motor Vehicle

• Library: Insurance Practice 2015

The personal automobile policy also provides that it insures any person while “occupying” the vehicle and defines “[o]ccupying” to mean “in, upon, getting in, on, out, or off” the vehicle. Copyright, ISO Properties, Inc., 1998.

A passenger is a “user” of the motor vehicle in which he or she is riding for purposes of the exclusion of coverage for a person “using a vehicle without a reasonable belief that that person has permission to do so.” Marchand ex rel. Marchand v. Safeco Ins. Co. of Am., 2 S.W.3d 826 (Mo. App. E.D. 1999).

When Patty’s car broke down, she pulled to the side of the road and summoned her husband, Mark. When Mark arrived, he put his vehicle nose to nose with Patty’s about three feet apart. The plaintiff, a neighbor of Mark and Patty, came along and stopped his car behind Patty’s. Thereafter, the plaintiff assisted them in running jumper cables from Mark’s car to Patty’s car. At the time of the accident, the plaintiff was leaning over the opened hood of Patty’s car with his stomach against the grill and his legs against the bumper, holding the jumper cable terminals in his hands. At this time, an uninsured motorist’s vehicle crossed from the opposite lane and struck the rear of Mark’s car causing the plaintiff injuries. The court held that the plaintiff was not using...