Thomas v. Progressive Casualty Insurance Co.

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• enforcing named driver exclusion in UIM policy and stating “[t]he power to invalidate a contract on public policy grounds must be used cautiously and exercised only in cases free from doubt” (citation and internal quotation marks omitted)
• notwithstanding rule to interpret policy so as not to render any provision superfluous, “‘we will not do so when that [interpretation] is inconsistent with the structure and format of the [provision] and when that [interpretation] is otherwise unreasonable’” (citation omitted)
• “[W]ords of the . . . contract are given their ordinary meaning in the absence of a definition in the . . . contract.” (citations omitted)
• “ ‘In determining whether a policy provision is subject to two equally proper interpretations, we read the insurance contract ‘as an entirety rather than seriatim by clauses.’ ’ ”
• “The construction of an insurance policy is the process of determining the policy’s legal effect; interpretation is the process of determining the meaning of the words used in the policy.”
• named driver exclusions “implicitly authorized” by the legislature

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).