## Facts

- Robert Weber owned a pickup truck insured under a no-fault automobile policy issued pursuant to North Dakota’s Auto Accident Reparations Act.
- Robert, Virginia Weber, and two companions used the pickup on a deer-hunting trip; Robert drove, Virginia sat in the front passenger seat, and the companions sat in the rear seats.
- After spotting deer, Robert drove the pickup into a roadside ditch and slowed/stopped so the occupants could get out.
- As a rear-seat passenger exited through the right rear door, he simultaneously loaded a bolt-action rifle; when he closed the bolt, the rifle discharged.
- The bullet traveled through the open rear door and front seat area and struck Robert in the back while he remained seated in the driver’s seat; he died shortly thereafter.
- Virginia Weber, as surviving spouse, sought no-fault death and survivor’s loss benefits; the insurer denied coverage, contending the injury did not arise from the vehicle’s covered use.

## Issues

1. Whether the insured’s death from an accidental rifle discharge occurring during a passenger’s exit from the insured vehicle arose out of the “maintenance or use of a motor vehicle as a vehicle” under the Auto Accident Reparations Act and the policy.
2. Whether the required causal connection is satisfied when the vehicle is not the physical instrumentality of the injury but is integrally related to the circumstances producing it.
3. Whether the insured was “occupying” the vehicle at the time of injury so as to qualify for no-fault benefits.

## Decision

- The North Dakota Supreme Court affirmed the district court’s judgment for Virginia Weber.
- The court held that Robert Weber’s death arose out of the use of the motor vehicle as a vehicle within the meaning of the Act and policy.
- The court accepted the trial court’s finding that Robert was occupying the vehicle when shot and that the vehicle’s use for transportation and the immediate exit sequence supplied a sufficient causal nexus.
- The insurer was obligated to pay the awarded no-fault death benefit, funeral expense benefit, and survivor’s income-loss benefits.

## Legal Principles

- “Arising out of the use of a motor vehicle as a vehicle” requires a sufficient causal relationship between vehicle use and injury; it does not require the vehicle to be the direct physical cause of harm.
- An intervening instrumentality (such as a firearm) does not defeat coverage when the vehicle’s transportation-related use is closely connected in time and circumstances to the injury-producing event.
- No-fault coverage provisions under the Auto Accident Reparations Act are construed to effectuate prompt, assured compensation consistent with the Act’s remedial purpose.
- A person seated in the vehicle at the time of injury is “occupying” the vehicle for purposes of statutory and policy benefits.

## Conclusion

Because the insured was occupying the truck and the accidental shooting occurred as an incident of the truck’s transportation-related use during the hunters’ stop and exit, the death arose out of the use of the vehicle as a vehicle, and no-fault death and survivor’s benefits were payable.


Weber v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 284 N.W.2d 299 (N.D. 1979)