SPRINGFIELD – On the day David Overstreet took his oath at the Supreme Court, the Court turned one of his appellate court dissents into law.
On Dec. 3, the Justices found Overstreet’s reasoning stronger than that of Fifth District Justice Judy Cates, who authored the insurance dispute opinion in a farm accident case.
The Supreme Court echoed the sentiment of Fifth District voters who elected Overstreet over Cates by 65 to 35 percent.
Cates and former appellate judge Melissa Chapman found the words “mechanical device” ambiguous last year, but the Supreme Court found none.
“A court may not read an ambiguity into a policy just to find in favor of the insured,” wrote Justice Michael Burke.
“A policy term is not ambiguous because the term is not defined within the policy or because the parties can suggest creative possibilities for its meaning.”
Five Justices concurred and Justice James Kilbride didn’t participate.
The accident occurred in harvest season in 2013, on the farm of Sheldon Elmore in Effingham County.
His son Kent Elmore backed his father’s grain truck up to an auger that would draw corn from a hopper, carry it upward, and deposit it into a transport truck.
A tractor provided power for the auger.
To open the back gate of the truck, Kent stepped up on the auger.
Cates wrote in her opinion that the auger’s protective cover had been removed.
His right foot struck a blade and the auger amputated the leg above the knee.
Kent sued his father and settled with Bishop Mutual, Grinnell Mutual, and State Farm for $1.9 million.
Kent reserved a right to pursue further coverage from his father’s State Farm policy on the grain truck.
The policy excluded “damages resulting from movement of property by means of a mechanical device, other than a hand truck, that is not attached to the vehicle.”
State Farm petitioned for relief and Associate Judge Allan Lolie granted judgment. Kent appealed.
Neither side could cite Illinois law defining a mechanical device, so they cited cases from other states.
Cates and Chapman found State Farm’s cases didn’t apply because the devices were self powered or motorized machines used in commercial settings.
Cates wrote that the auger in this case was not self powered or motorized.
“Standing alone, the auger was simply a large cylindrical structure with metal helical blades,” Cates wrote.
She wrote that it had no ability to move grain without an external power source and its blades turned only if attached to a tractor’s power takeoff shaft.
“Even then, the auger would not work effectively to pull the grain unless the RPMs of the tractor were increased, depending on the weight of the grain in the hopper,” she wrote.
“Under State Farm’s expansive definition of the term mechanical device, liability coverage would be afforded only for injuries arising when grain is unloaded from an insured truck by hand or by a hand truck.”
Dissenter Overstreet wrote that the auger wasn’t attached to the insured vehicle.
“Considering the plain and ordinary meanings of the words mechanical, device, and auger, I would conclude that the only reasonable interpretation is that the grain auger, operated by the tractor, was a mechanical device,” Overstreet wrote.
“That the exclusion could conceivably apply in other factual circumstances does not mean that the exclusion is ambiguous as to the grain auger.”
He wrote that the majority’s conclusion restricted the freedom of parties to make their own contracts and exclude certain risks from liability coverage.
All Supreme Court Justices agreed with Overstreet except James Kilbride, who did not participate.
“Ambiguity exists only where the language is susceptible to more than one reasonable interpretation,” Justice Michael Burke wrote.
“This Court will not strain to find ambiguity where none exists, nor will it adopt an interpretation that rests on gossamer distinctions that the average person, for whom the policy is written, cannot be expected to understand.”
He wrote that Cates and Chapman committed error by reading into the policy a requirement that a mechanical device must be self powered or motorized.
“The appellate court’s analysis is akin to a court finding an exclusion applicable to watercraft ambiguous as to whether a sailboat is a watercraft because the court discovered three out-of-state cases applying the exclusion to motorboats,” he wrote.
He wrote that the policy considered a hand truck a mechanical device.
“If a small hand propelled truck or wheelbarrow is a mechanical device, then clearly the policy itself does not require a device to be self powered or motorized to be considered a mechanical device,” he wrote.
Michael Bedesky and Martin Morrissey, both of Reed Armstrong in Edwardsville, represented State Farm.
Christopher Koester and Kara Wade, both of Taylor Law in Effingham, represented Kent Elmore.
During a ceremony Thursday afternoon, Overstreet was sworn into office at the Illinois Supreme Court by retiring Justice Lloyd Karmeier.