Metaphysics of causation: Eastern District of Pennsylvania finds no proximate link between use of police car and traffic stop injury.

Police officer Alan Petrosky responded to a motor vehicle accident involving two vehicles. After issuing a citation to one of the drivers for failure to provide proof of insurance, he instructed the drivers that they could leave the scene and began to return to his patrol car. As Officer Petrosky stopped to respond to one of the drivers’ request for his name and badge number, the driver who was issued the citation began to pull away from the scene and struck the officer. The injured officer recovered the $15,000 policy limits from the at-fault driver’s insurance carrier and filed an underinsured motorist (UIM) claim with his personal auto carrier, Allstate Fire and Casualty Insurance Company. Allstate moved for summary judgment, arguing that the “regular use” exclusion precluded UIM benefits because the policy contained an exclusion for bodily injury “while in, on, getting into or out of” a motor vehicle that is available for the insured’s regular use but not owned by the insured. Allstate contended that Officer Petrosky was injured while in the process of “getting into” the patrol car when he stopped to write down his name and badge number, and a causal connection relationship existed between the injury and patrol car because he drove the car to the scene of the investigation. Judge Davis rejected this argument, remarking that, although “but for the sun rising and Petrosky reporting to work that day, he would not have driven the patrol car and he would not have been injured,” not every incidental factor that contributes to an accident is a “but for” cause in the legal sense. In finding coverage was owed, the court narrowed the definition of “getting into” to exclude instances where the insured merely had an intent to get into the vehicle or stopped getting into the vehicle to perform some other task.

_{Case Law Alerts, 1st Quarter, January 2016}

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