A state appeals panel has totaled a women’s attempt to drive a class action lawsuit alleging her car insurance provider failed to pay for the taxes and fees she needed to pay to replace a car the insurer deemed beyond repair.
Plaintiff Ashley Bond sued United Equitable Insurance Group in Cook County Circuit Court because the company didn’t cover 6.25 percent sales tax or the $95 title transfer and $25 registration transfer fees for a car she bought after United decided her insured vehicle had been totaled in a collision. Bond sought to expand the lawsuit to include a potentially large class of other people who also had not received money for the taxes and fees when replacing their cars.
Cook County Judge Raymond Mitchell dismissed Bond’s complaint, finding her policy promised to pay “the cost of replacing the owned automobile,” an obligation he said is limited to the “actual cash value” of the car, a figure the policy doesn’t specifically define.
Illinois First District Appellate Justice Nathaniel Howse
| Illinoiscourts.gov
Bond appealed that dismissal to the First District Appellate Court. Justice Nathaniel Howse wrote the panel’s decision, issued March 29. Justices Terrence Lavin and Cynthia Cobbs concurred. The order was issued under Supreme Court Rule 23, which may limit its use as precedent.
According to court records, Unite Equitable gave Bond a notice — which Department of Insurance regulations require — which detailed how a policyholder replacing a vehicle can obtain reimbursement for sales tax and title fees.
“The notice also explains that if the enumerated steps are not followed, the insurer is not required to pay sales tax and title fees,” Howse wrote, adding Bond “never notified defendant that she replaced her vehicle, and she did not seek the payment of sales tax and title fees from defendant within the time period set forth in the regulation.”
Beyond that, the panel said, Bond’s complaint doesn’t allege she bought or leased a replacement vehicle within 30 days of getting a settlement, nor did she claim to have submitted paperwork to United Equitable regarding her new car or that she ever incurred the fees she said the company was obligated to cover.
Rather, Howse explained, Bond argued “she is entitled to the actual cash value of the vehicle and that actual cash value means the cost to replace the vehicle, including all costs that are reasonably necessary to effectuate a replacement.”
The panel rejected that argument, saying the state regulation is “specific and unambiguous” in its directive toward policyholders. Specifically, it outlines affirmative steps to trigger an insurers’ obligation to pay the contested fees. Furthermore, the policy exempts insurers from having to pay those fees when a client doesn’t follow regulatory requirements.
Bond argued the regulation only imposes a minimum obligation and nothing prohibits an insurer from including a policy provision dictating it will cover such fees, giving their own clients more favorable coverage than what the law mandates.
“If we were to find in plaintiff’s favor, we would be specifically contradicting the mandatory language in the regulation,” Howse wrote. “If actual cash value always meant that sales tax and title fees were automatically payable, as plaintiff argues, then almost the whole regulation becomes meaningless surplusage.”
The panel cited a 2020 U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals opinion, Sigler v. GEICO Casualty, which it said considered the same question, and rejected Bond’s position the case was either wrongly decided or somehow different from her complaint.
“The regulation is directed at situations just as the one presented here,” Howse wrote. “Nothing in (Bond’s) policy entitles her to surpass the regulatory requirements and secure automatic payment for sales tax and title fees in spite of the regulation’s clear requirements.”
The panel concluded by saying Judge Mitchell correctly dismissed Bond’s complaint, with prejudice, and affirmed his opinion.