Uninsured Motorist Coverage not Provided Absent of Physical Contact with a Hit-and-Run Vehicle
In Illinois Farmers Ins. Co. v, Schneider, Schneider was involved in an automobile accident while driving on Interstate 90 in Chicago, Illinois. Schneider was operating her 2002 Pontiac Grand Am GT Coupe and was on the phone with her boyfriend whom she was also following. The boyfriend warned Schnieder that there was a bumper on the roadway ahead. Schneider did not have enough time to change lanes and struck the bumper, causing her car to fishtail and collide with a semi-truck. Following the accident, Schneider was taken to the hospital for bone fractures and lacerations. Schneider subsequently made a demand under her Farmers’ insurance policy, which covered her car for a hit-and-run uninsured motorist claim.
Illinois Farmers Insurance Company (“Farmers”) brought a declaratory judgment action against Eric Schneider, seeking a declaration by the court that Schneider’s April 11, 2006, motor vehicle accident did not involve a hit-and-run uninsured motor vehicle as defined by the policy. Therefore, Farmers had no obligation to provide uninsured motorist coverage to Schneider.
The court addressed the question of whether Schneider’s claim fell under the hit-and-run uninsured motorist provision under the insurance policy and therefore whether Farmers had to provide coverage for her bodily injuries. Section 143a of the Illinois Insurance Code requires that all automobile insurance policies provide coverage for the protection of persons insured thereunder who are entitled to recover damages for bodily injury from the owners or operators of hit-and-run motor vehicles. It is well established in Illinois that an insured cannot recover under the hit-and-run provision of the uninsured motorist coverage unless there is a physical contact of the unidentified motor vehicle with the insured or an automobile occupied by the insured. The purpose of the requirement of contact, either in a statute or a policy, is to reduce the potential for fraud in that otherwise an insured might simply lose control of his automobile and blame it on a nonexistent driver. Further, it is established that if there is a direct, casual connection between the hit-and-run vehicle and the plaintiff’s vehicle and the connection carries through the plaintiff’s vehicle by a continuous and a contemporaneously transmitted force from the hit and run vehicle, then recovery is allowed.
Schneider’s insurance policy states: “The physical contact requirement is met if the hit-and-run vehicle makes contact with another vehicle and this contact carries through to your insured vehicle by a continuous and contemporaneously transmitted force.” Here Farmers argues that Schneider’s insurance policy does not provide uninsured motorist coverage for her injuries because there was no “physical contact” with a “hit and run vehicle” during her accident.
The court determined that Schneider failed to offer any evidence to show that the bumper she collided with in fact fell from a hit and run vehicle, making it impossible for her show a continuous and contemporaneously transmitted force between a hit and run vehicle or part of a hit and run vehicle and her vehicle. Schneider had the burden of proving the bumper at issue fell from a hit-and-run vehicle, as opposed to debris that had been laying in the road for some time and she failed to do so. The court therefore held that the connection between the bumper plaintiff struck and another vehicle is far too attenuated to permit this court to declare that plaintiff is entitled to benefits under the hit-and-run clause of the uninsured motorists policy.
Illinois Farmers Ins. Co. v, Schneider, 2013 WL 5346379 (Ill.App. 1 Dist.). (This order was filed under Supreme Court Rule 23 and may not be cited as precedent by any party except in the limited circumstances allowed under Rule 23(e)(1).).
