Use your personal vehicle for business use?

Be careful if you do.  Here’s a recent Tennessee Court of Appeals case where Farmers asserted an exclusion against one of their policyholders.

Everyday individuals trying to make a living use their personal automobiles to conduct business.  Often, this is encouraged by their employers.  Its good for those individuals to check their insurance policy to make sure their business activities are covered.

It seems to be a fairly rare instance where the insurer for a personal auto policy asserts this type of business use exclusion, since they are usually fairly narrow exclusions.  The point of the exclusion is for the vehicle owner to get a commercial auto policy, which is designed for business use vehicle.

In this instance, the exclusion stated:  “[w]hile used in employment by any person whose primary duties are the delivery of products or services[.]”  Both the trial court and the Court of Appeals agreed with Farmers on this one and the policyholder was out of luck.

This entry was posted on September 30, 2008 at 8:03 am and is filed under Litigation, Injury Law, Insurance Practices, Insurance Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.