Amicus Curiae Brief for Trucking Industry Defense Association

On May 19, 2010, Jim Bryan and Taylor Stukes filed an amicus curiae brief in a case pending before the North Carolina Supreme Court on behalf of the Trucking Industry Defense Association.  The Brief supported the position of Canal Insurance Company.  Bryan and Stukes argued in their brief that the North Carolina Court of Appeals wrongly upheld a trial court’s interpretation of a provision in a trucking company’s insurance policy that defined who was an “insured” under the policy and had coverage.  Judge Steelman of the Court of Appeals wrote a dissenting opinion. 

In the case, Huber Engineered Woods, LLC v. Canal Insurance Company, a truck driver was killed while loading his truck at a shipper’s manufacturing plant.  The truck driver’s employer, a trucking company, had obtained commercial automobile liability insurance coverage.  The estate of the deceased truck driver sued the shipper, alleging the shipper caused the death of the truck driver.  The shipper claimed that it was entitled to insurance coverage under a provision in the trucking company’s insurance policy.  The court of appeals affirmed the trial court’s judgment, which interpreted the provision as providing insurance coverage to the shipper.  The insurance company appealed the decision to the North Carolina Supreme Court.

The key language at issue in the provision in the insurance policy stated that the policy would cover any party who was liable “because of the acts or omissions of an insured.”  The shipper argued that because it is undisputed that the truck driver was an insured and the truck driver’s “acts and omissions” the day of the accident led to the shipper’s alleged liability for the accident, then the shipper was covered by the insurance policy.  The trial court and the court of appeals agreed with the shipper.  However, the better interpretation of the policy, and the one argued in the amicus curiae brief, is that the provision only covered a party who was liable because of its own acts or the acts of its employees or other agents.  The amicus brief argued that it does not make sense for the policy to cover a party whose own acts leading to an accident were somehow combined with the acts of an insured person. 

The practical effect of this decision, if allowed to stand, would be to broaden greatly the scope of the insurance coverage provided by commercial automobile liability policies in North Carolina.  Essentially, insurers will now be faced with insuring literally everyone whose interaction with an insured results in some accident.  This will increase the exposure of insurers, who, in the face of increased costs, will be forced to pass it on their insureds, i.e., trucking companies.  Trucking companies, in turn, will be forced to past the cost to their customers, and the cost will finally be born by the consumers.  This is precisely the result the amicus brief was filed to prevent. 

Click here to access the full amicus curiae brief.