Kponve v. Allstate Insurance

HARRELL, J. With somewhat greater frequency than Halley’s Comet becomes observable to the naked eye from Earth, 1 this Court will adopt, in whole or in part (and without substantive ³¹² change), an opinion of the Court of Special Appeals because we agree with its resolution of the matter and cannot improve often in any material way upon its analysis. 2 The opinion of the Court of Special Appeals in the present case, Allstate Ins. Co. v. Kponve, 225 Md.App. 370 , 124 A.3d 1147 (2015), is such a nonpareil. 3 Its explication and application of the relevant law to the questions presented to it is spot-on. The denouement of the opinion represents an elegant balance of justice and law. Because the questions presented to this Court and the intermediate appellate court differ slightly, we elaborate briefly on that point alone.

We granted Austria Kponve’s Petition for a Writ of Certiorari in this case to consider the sole question of whether Allstate Ins. Co. v. Miller, 315 Md. 182 , 553 A.2d 1268 (1989) remains good law in Maryland, in light of the Court of Special Appeals’s opinion in the present case. The parties disagree, of course, on the correct response to this query and, thus, we make clear our answer that Allstate Ins. Co. v. Miller, remains sound law.

The Court of Special Appeals, in answering a different question put to it by the parties 4 , concluded that: Allstate was never sued in contract and therefore we are dealing with a tort case, pure and simple and not, as in Miller , with what was “functionally ... a tort case.” In a tort case, regardless as to whether policy limits are disput ³¹³ ed, the amount of uninsured motorist coverage is irrelevant — those limits would only have relevance if it was necessary to bring a breach of contract