State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance v. Flubacher

OPINION BECKER, Circuit Judge. This is an appeal from an order of the District Court granting summary judgment in favor of State Farm Automobile Insurance Company in its declaratory judgment action against Catherine Flubacher. State Farm asked the Court to determine that Flubacher, a State Farm policyholder, was bound by her deceased husband’s written election of uninsured/underinsured motorist limits in the amount of $15,000 per person/$30,000 per accident, which limits are lower then the limits of bodily injury liability coverage on the policy. The District Court held that she was. *529 We affirm. The facts are well known to the parties and need not be repeated here. Flubacher’s argument is squarely precluded by the decisions in Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company v. Rosetta Buffetta, Administratrix of the Estate of Francesco Miriello, 230 F.3d 634 (3d Cir. 2000); Kimball v. Cigna, 443 Pa.Super. 143, 660 A.2d 1386 (Pa.Super.1995); and Rupert v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, 291 F.3d 243 (3d Cir.2002). While the opinion writer is flattered that Flubacher’s counsel urges that his dissenting opinion in Rupert is better reasoned than that of the majority, it remains a dissent, and we are, of course, bound by the majority. Finally, Flubacher looks to a decision by the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, in which the Court, without citation to any cases, held that a wife was not bound by the limited tort election made by her ex-husband. Kail v. Kalsek, Case No. GD99-15479 (Allegheny Cty. Ct. of Common Pleas May 31, 2001). Although the facts in Kail seem identical to Bujfetta (the wife was covered but not the named insured on her ex-husband’s policy and only became the named insured after her ex-husband was removed from the policy), the Court determined that a new policy was created and the ex-husband’s election could not bind the wife. Despite this contradiction, we cannot revisit our conclusion in Bujfetta simply on account of a Court of Common Pleas decision. See Smith v. Calgon Carbon Corp., 917 F.2d 1338, 1341, 1343 (3d Cir.1990) (holding that we are “required to ‘predict the position which [the Pennsylvania Supreme Court] would take in resolving this dispute,’ ” and “in the absence of a clear statement by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to the contrary or other persuasive evidence of a change in Pennsylvania law, we are bound by the holdings of previous panels of this court”) (quoting Robertson v. Allied Signal, Inc., 914 F.2d 360, 364 (3d Cir.1990)). The judgment of the District Court will be affirmed.