ST. LOUIS – A judge in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, Eastern Division, recently granted a motion for summary judgment from LM General Insurance Co. in a drive-by shooting case.
In a May 2 filing, U.S. District Judge Ronnie White granted the summary judgment in a case that centers on a lawsuit filed by plaintiff Ripal Patel, the widow of Maulik Patel.
On Jan. 11, 2016, Maulik Patel was stopped in traffic in his Hyundai Sonata when he was shot in a drive-by shooting by unknown occupants of an uninsured vehicle. The Patels’ Hyundai was insured by LM General Insurance under a policy that included uninsured motorist coverage with limits of $250,000 for each person or $500,000 for each accident.
Ripal Patel sought to recover uninsured motorist benefits as a result of her husband’s shooting death. The filing stated that plaintiffs theory is that she is entitled to benefits from the uninsured motorist policy because the unidentified vehicle that the shooters occupied at the time of the shooting of her husband was an "uninsured motor vehicle" under the policy.
According to the filing, “The unidentified vehicle that the shooters occupied never hit or otherwise made physical contact with Maulik or his vehicle.”
The policy issued by LM General Insurance says the company would only pay uninsured motorist coverage benefits from liability that comes out of the “use” of an uninsured motor vehicle, the ruling states. But the court ruled that, “Maulik's injury did not arise out of the use of an uninsured motor vehicle. Specifically, Maulik's injury was not caused by an uninsured vehicle; the shots just happened to come from an uninsured vehicle.”
The court ruled that the accident did not stem from the use of the uninsured motorist’s vehicle and that “at most, the shots may have come from the uninsured motorist. However, that is not sufficient for uninsured motorist coverage. Missouri appellate courts have made clear that ‘use’ of a vehicle cannot arise merely from the ‘situs’ of an injury.”