A Pennsylvania court determined that a man injured while driving a vehicle owned and provided by his employer is not entitled to stack the UIM benefits from his employer’s insurer with UIM benefits from his personal auto policy. The case is Erie Ins. Exch. v. Russo, 2025 Pa. Super. LEXIS 335 (Pa. Super Ct. 2025).
The Auto Accident
Richard Russo suffered injuries in an auto collision on work-related business while driving an auto provided by his employer, Lancaster Plumbing, Heating, Cooling and Electrical. Russo was paid $35,000 in UIM benefits through the commercial auto policy Lancaster had purchased from Donegal Insurance Group; this policy did not include stacked coverage, and it did not include Russo as a named insured. The payment from Donegal, however, was insufficient to cover all of the bills for Russo’s injuries. Fortunately, Russo had opted for stacked coverage under a personal auto policy with Erie Insurance Exchange, so he filed a second UIM claim with Erie.
The “Regular Use” Barrier
Erie, however, denied the claim based on the policy’s exclusion for “bodily injury…using a nonowned ‘motor vehicle’...which is regularly used by ‘you’...but not insured for Uninsured or Underinsured Motorist Coverage under this [Erie] policy” (emphasis added). The insurer filed a claim requesting a judicial declaration that Russo was not entitled to, and therefore Erie did not have to pay, UIM benefits because he had been driving a vehicle furnished for his regular use.
Russo filed his objection. He asserted that, a few years earlier, the case Rush v. Erie Exchange, 265 A.3d 794 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2021) had ended with the Superior Court ruling invalidating the regular use exclusion. Unfortunately for Russo, Rush had gone before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court (308 A.3d 780, (Pa. 2024)), where the justices determined that “the regular use exclusion was valid and enforceable.” The trial court found in favor of Erie and declared Russo was not entitled to UIM benefits.
Same Results, Different Reasons
Under Pennsylvania’s Motor Vehicle Financial Responsibility Law (MVFRL), the limits for UIM coverage were equal to “the sum of the limits for each motor vehicle as to which the injured person is an insured” (75 Pa. C.S. §1738, emphasis added). The court said this statute meant that Russo could only recover under both the Donegal and the Erie policies if he was considered an “insured” within the meaning of each policy. Therefore, they only needed to decide whether Russo was considered an “insured” under the Donegal policy.
Russo argued he was considered an “insured” under the Donegal policy for two reasons: he was “an employee insured under his employer’s policy,” and he was “within the scope of his employment” when the accident took place. He argued that, in Craley v. State Farm Fire and Cas. Co., 895 A.2d 530 (Pa. 2006), the justices of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had adhered to a declaratory opinion of a former insurance commissioner that “single-vehicle policy holders paying higher premiums for stacking could benefit from doing so … where the individual is injured in a vehicle other than his own insured vehicle and is an insured under the non-owned vehicle's policy, which also has uninsured motorist coverage (such as an employer's vehicle)” (emphasis added). Lancaster, Russo said, had purchased the commercial auto policy, including UM/UIM coverage, to protect its employees, so Russo was allegedly entitled to inter-policy stacking because he was “a specifically intended beneficiary of [the] policy.”
Erie countered that “‘an insured’ [was] a term of art” in the industry that did not extend to “any” insured. When the named insured was a corporation like Lancaster, only “officers of the corporation” were considered “insureds” in the context of whether stacking UIM coverage was permissible.
The judges agreed with Erie. In Generette v. Donegal Mut. Ins. Co., 957 A.2d 1180 (Pa. 2008), the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had determined that the definition of an “insured” under the MVFRL, as enacted by the state legislature, was controlling. Under 75 Pa. C.S. §1702, “insured” only included the insured named in the policy declarations and certain other individuals residing in the same household as the named insured. It was silent regarding the status of “guest passengers” as insureds, and the justices refused to extend the MVFRL’s definition of “insured” because doing so would cross the line into judicial legislation.
Furthermore, Russo’s interpretation of Craley stretched a bit too far. The commissioner had not stated that any employee occupying a vehicle owner by their employer was considered an insured under the employer’s auto policy. It was still necessary for the employee to be considered “an insured” within the meaning of Lancaster’s Donegal policy. Simply because Russo had been occupying his employer’s vehicle at the time of the accident did not mean he was an “insured.”
Conclusion
The appellate judges reached the same conclusion, albeit on other grounds, as the trial court: Russo was not entitled to stack benefits from his Erie policy with the benefits he had received from his employer’s Donegal policy. The trial court’s decision was affirmed.
Editor’s Note: Stacking is a tricky topic. In this case, Russo was attempting inter-policy stacking when he claimed he was entitled to UIM benefits from his personal auto carrier in addition to the benefits he had received from Donegal. The other type of stacking is intra-policy stacking, where multiple autos are named on a single policy, and the insured wants the benefits for each auto listed.
Insurance has a general rule against recovering twice for the same injuries, which is part of the reason insurers are so leery of allowing insureds to stack UM/UIM benefits. Some states, but not all, have specific statutes regarding whether or not stacking is permitted. Some policies will include explicit, anti-stacking provisions as a measure against stacking, whether or not state law does the same.