Best v. Standard Fire Ins. Co., 2026 Ind.App. LEXIS 307 (Ind.Ct.App. 2026)
The Indiana Court of Appeals recently addressed whether a tortfeasor is underinsured when its insurer pays the full per-person liability limit for an insured’s death, but that payment is divided among the decedent-insured’s unmarried parents.
Seventeen-year-old Jaxson Schooley was killed when a car crossed the center line and struck head-on the vehicle in which he was a passenger. The tortfeasor carried a $100,000 per-person bodily-injury liability limit, which the insurer paid in full—$50,000 to Jaxson’s mother, Brittney Best, and $50,000 to his father, Jeffrey Schooley, who were never married to one another. At the time of the accident, Best’s husband had an auto policy with Standard Fire Insurance Company (“Standard”), and the car Jaxon was riding in was insured by CSAA General Insurance Company d/b/a AAA Insurance (“AAA”). Each policy provided underinsured motorist (“UIM”) coverage with a per-person limit of $100,000. Because she received only $50,000 from the tortfeasor’s insurer, Best sought $50,000 in UIM benefits under both policies. After Standard and AAA denied Best’s claims, she filed suit.
Standard and AAA moved to dismiss, arguing that the tortfeasor was not underinsured because the $100,000 already paid for Jaxson’s death equaled the $100,000 per-person UIM limit under each policy. Best cross-moved for partial summary judgment, arguing that the relevant amount to compare to the UIM per-person limit was the $50,000 she personally received, not the total paid for Jaxson’s death. The trial court agreed with the insurers and dismissed Best’s complaint, finding that the tortfeasor’s insurer had “paid the full $100,000 per-person limit to resolve the singular wrongful death arising from that injury.”
The Court of Appeals reversed. Relying on Corr v. American Fam. Ins., 767 N.E.2d 535 (Ind. 2002), the Court of Appeals held that the relevant “insured” was Best, as the claimant, rather than Jaxson, as the person who sustained the bodily injury that lead to the claim. In Corr, the divorced parents of a child killed in an accident each received $57,500 from the tortfeasor’s liability coverage and sought UIM benefits under their respective policies. Although the parents collectively received $115,000 for their daughter’s death, the Indiana Supreme Court treated the $57,500 each parent actually received as the amount “available for payment” to that parent. Thus, the Court of Appeals held that the relevant amount in Best was the $50,000 Best personally received, rather than the $100,000 State Farm paid for Jaxson’s death. Because $50,000 was less than the $100,000 UIM limit, the Court held that the tortfeasor was underinsured.
The Court of Appeals also addressed its decision Hanna v. Indiana Farmers Mut. Ins. Co., 963 N.E.2d 72 (Ind. Ct. App. 2012), trans. denied, where parents whose son was killed in an accident unsuccessfully sought UIM benefits after recovering more than the per-person UIM limit from the tortfeasors. Although agreeing with the result in Hanna, the Court of Appeals concluded that the Child Wrongful Death Act should not have driven the result; instead, because the son was the only insured who sustained bodily injury, only one per-person UIM limit was available un
der the parents’ joint policy. The Court of Appeals distinguished Hanna because Best was “not claiming a second per-person limit under a UIM policy she shares with another insured pressing the same claim. She is claiming the remainder of the Standard Fire and AAA policies’ per-person limit for Jaxson’s death, which is in line with Corr.”
Accordingly, the Court of Appeals held that Best was entitled to $50,000 in UIM benefits. Because the parties had not addressed how those benefits should be apportioned between Standard Fire and AAA, the Court of Appeals remanded the case so that the trial court could determine how that amount should be allocated between Standard Fire and AAA.
With all due respect to the Court of Appeals, this decision appears to misapply Indiana law and the applicable policy language. The UIM policies provide coverage for an “insured” who sustained “bodily injury” caused by an accident with a UIM. In this case, Jaxson was the only “insured” who sustained a “bodily injury,” and the tortfeasor’s insurer paid the “per person” limit of the liability coverage. While the tortfeasor’s per-person limit for Jaxon’s bodily injury may have been split between his parents, Indiana’s UIM statute looks to how much was paid for “the insured’s bodily injury,” not how those payments were divided. See Ind. Code 27-7-5-5(c). In this case, the per-person liability limit of the tortfeasor’s policy and the per-person limit of UIM coverage available under either policy matched, such that the tortfeasor was not underinsured under either Indiana’s UIM statute or the UIM policies.