According to Ms. Stonehocker, “[b]ecause the cook is always the first one up and makes noise when cooking, [her] final evening parking place was always away from the wall tents so [she] did not wake [the guests] when cooking in the morning.”

On June 4 and 5, 2000, as guests were arriving for a cattle drive, Bear Creek's Suburban was undergoing mechanical work and was out of use. Consequently, although Bear Creek normally used its Suburban to transport guests and luggage, Ms. Stonehocker used her pickup to transport guests from Cut Bank and East Glacier to the ranch. She had to make multiple trips to transport all the guests because her pickup seated only two people in addition to the driver. Ms. Stonehocker then used her pickup and trailer to take the guests' luggage to the first campsite, also a task normally handled by an employee driving Bear Creek's Suburban.

During the course of the multi-day cattle drive, Ms. Stonehocker continued using her pickup and trailer to transport the mobile kitchen and the guests' luggage from campsite to campsite. Each night she would park the pickup near the guests' tents so they would not have far to carry their luggage, and then she would move the pickup away from the tents so as not to disturb the guests in the morning. On the last night of the drive, before moving her pickup away from the guest tents, Ms. Stonehocker fell asleep in her trailer with the pickup doors unlocked and the key still in the ignition. She said that she awoke around 5:00 a.m. to the sound of her pickup being started. She said that she saw a man she did not recognize in the driver's seat and that he drove the pickup and attached trailer away from the campsite. When Ms. Stonehocker realized that her pickup and trailer were being stolen, she called 911. At some point, she either jumped or was thrown from the trailer and sustained a head injury that prevented her from recalling other details of the incident.

Ms. Stonehocker's pickup was insured by State Farm Insurance Company. State Farm paid Stonehocker the uninsured motorist (“UM”) benefits owed to her under her policy, but denied liability coverage because the pickup had been stolen by a man who was not a permissive driver under the policy. Ms. Stonehocker then sought to recover UM benefits from Bear Creek's corporate auto policy, issued by Travelers Indemnity Company.

Travelers denied UM coverage to Ms. Stonehocker, and litigation ensued. The trial court found that Ms. Stonehocker's pickup was not an insured vehicle under Bear Creek's policy and granted Travelers' motion for summary judgment.

The dispute reached the Montana Supreme Court.

The Bear Creek Policy

The UM portion of Bear Creek's commercial auto policy stated that Travelers:

will pay all sums the “insured” is legally entitled to recover as compensatory damages from the owner or driver of an “uninsured motor vehicle.” The damages must result from “bodily injury” sustained by the “insured” caused by an “accident.”

The policy defined

insured

as

you

a

family member

or

[a]nyone else “occupying” a covered “auto” or a temporary substitute for a covered “auto”

as long as

[t]he covered “auto” [is] out of service because of its breakdown, repair, servicing, loss or destruction.

The court ruled that the trial court had erred in granting summary judgment to Travelers on the ground that at the time of Ms. Stonehocker's injury her personal pickup was not a “temporary substitute auto” under the Travelers policy.

In the court's opinion, because the covered auto, the 1996 Suburban, was out of use for repairs at the time of Ms. Stonehocker's injury, she was using her pickup as a temporary substitute for the Suburban at the time of her injury.

The court pointed out that the policy stated that an insured for purposes of UM coverage was “[a]nyone else 'occupying' a covered 'auto' or a temporary substitute for a covered 'auto,'” but that it did not define the term “temporary substitute.” According to the court, a “reasonable insurance consumer” would understand that the word “anyone” meant “any person” and that the focus of the policy provision was “on the vehicle being substituted and not on the person occupying the substituted vehicle.”

It then stated that the “proper test” for what constituted a temporary substitute auto was “the use to which it is put, and that a claimant need not first prove that he or she and no one else would have been occupying the covered auto.”

Ms. Stonehocker, the court ruled, was “using her pickup to perform a task normally performed by the Suburban” – even though she “would not have driven the Suburban under normal circumstances.” Had the Suburban been available and used to transport the guests' luggage, it would be the “only vehicle covered by the policy,” the court added. It declared that the “critical focus under the temporary substitute auto provision” was whether the pickup truck “was in fact being used as a substitute for the Suburban.” Ms. Stonehocker's “undisputed testimony that she was using her pickup to perform a task that the ranch Suburban normally would have performed” satisfied the “same use” test and was “sufficient to establish that [Ms.] Stonehocker's pickup was a temporary substitute for the Suburban, entitling her to judgment on her coverage claim.” The court concluded that she did not have to prove that she and no one else would have been occupying the Suburban on the day of her injury.

The case is Stonehocker v. Gulf Ins. Co., (Mont. March 29, 2016). Attorneys involved include: For Appellant: James G. Hunt, Hunt Law Firm, Helena, Montana; For Appellees: Kevin M. Funyak, Stacey & Funyak, Billings, Montana.