Section 6.18 Other Insurance (Stacking)

• Library: Insurance Practice 2015

Section 379.203, RSMo 2000, is silent about the “other insurance” issues that are very pertinent under the policy provisions. The collateral source rule applies to UM payments to the insured. Hagedorn v. Adams, 854 S.W.2d 470 (Mo. App. W.D. 1993).

Perhaps the most complicated, and at times irreconcilable, line of cases under the UM endorsement has arisen in connection with the concept of “stacking.” The basic issue is “how many policy limits apply?”

Public policy entitles an insured to stack UM coverages. Niswonger v. Farm Bureau Town & Country Ins. Co. of Mo., 992 S.W.2d 308 (Mo. App. E.D. 1999). UM coverage is to be stacked when the insured has multiple policies of insurance, Ragsdale v. Armstrong, 916 S.W.2d 783 (Mo. banc 1996), or when two or more vehicles are insured under a single policy, Lang v. Nationwide Mut. Fire Ins. Co.,970 S.W.2d 828 (Mo. App. E.D. 1998).

The first significant stacking case was Gordon v. Maupin, 469 S.W.2d 848 (Mo. App. E.D. 1971). The plaintiff was a passenger in an automobile that was struck by an uninsured motor vehicle. The host driver had UM coverage with limits of $5,000 per injury and a maximum of $10,000 per occurrence. After making payments to the driver and the other injured passengers, the driver’s insurance carrier had expended some $8,400 of the $10,000 limit. The court held that the plaintiff’s own UM limits under her policy of insurance could be claimed after the exhaustion of the limits of the driver’s policy, notwithstanding an escape clause in the driver’s policy, which seemed to deny such coverage. The court reasoned that the plaintiff did not have the then statutorily mandated $5,000 minimum protection from injury by the operator of an uninsured motor vehicle at the time her claim was presented for payment. With this case, the seeds of the law of “stacking” were sown.

Steinhaeufel v. Reliance Insurance Cos., 495 S.W.2d 463 (Mo. App. E.D. 1973), allowed, for the first time in Missouri, the stacking of a driver’s UM benefits under his own policy with the benefits available under the policy of his employer’s truck, which he was driving at the time of the accident. Two separate named insureds were involved, and the case presently stands for the proposition that both the policies of the driver and the policies of the owner of the described automobile can be applied to damages caused to the driver by an uninsured motorist.

In Automobile Club Inter-Insurance Exchange v. Diebold, 511 S.W.2d 135 (Mo. App. E.D. 1974), the court refused to allow stacking when one policy was issued on multiple vehicles and injuries were caused by an uninsured motorist to the named insured who was driving. The rationale for the case seemed to be that § 379.203, now RSMo 2000, required minimum financial responsibility limits per policy, not per car, and only one policy was issued by the insurance company, although it covered several automobiles.

In Galloway v. Farmers Insurance Co., 523 S.W.2d 339 (Mo. App. W.D. 1975), the named insured was injured by an uninsured motor vehicle while operating the described vehicle. The court held that both the policy of UM coverage on the vehicle he was driving and the policy of insurance on the other vehicle, which he owned, were applicable and thus allowed stacking of the two policies. Galloway distinguished Diebold,511 S.W.2d 135, on the one policy vs. multiple policies basis.

In Cameron Mutual Insurance Co. v. Madden,533 S.W.2d 538 (Mo...