“Medical payments coverage is not mandatory in Montana. Its presence in an insurance contract is at the sole discretion of the parties to the contract.”
How later courts described this case
- “Medical payments coverage is not mandatory in Montana. Its presence in an insurance contract is at the sole discretion of the parties to the contract.”
- rejecting alleged ambiguity in workers’ compensation exclusion in insurance policy
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
JUSTICE RICE
concurring.
¶51 I concur in the conclusions reached by the Court, but under a different rationale. Under Issue 1, I agree that the policy language here is clear and unambiguous. I further agree that Hardy and Mitchell provide no support for Newbury’s arguments because the policy language in those cases is distinguishable from the language here, although not for the reasons expressed by the Court in ¶ 27. The policies in those cases contained offset provisions which made the coverage as stated on the declarations page illusory. Such illusory coverage does not exist here, and it is for that reason-and not that the claimants in those cases were not “adequately compensated” or that the insurers there refused to stack the coverages-that I reject Newbury’s reliance on those cases. I continue to maintain that these others issues were wrongly reasoned and decided by the Court.