Plaintiff, Michigan Mutual Liability Company, appeals from a declaratory judgment granted defendants below.
• The controversy involved here is based upon an insurance policy issued by plaintiff to defendants on June 20,1963. The policy contained an uninsured motorists clause which provided:
“1. Damages' for Bodily Injury Caused By. Uninsured Automobiles: The company will pay. all gums which the insured * * shall be legally *477 entitled to recover as damages from the owner.or operator of an uninsured automobile because of bodily injury, sickness or disease, including death resulting therefrom * * * sustained by the insured, caused by accident and arising from the ownership, maintenance or use of such uninsured automobile.”
The policy defined an uninsured automobile as:
“(1) An automobile with respect to the ownership, maintenance or use of which there is * * * no bodily injury liability bond or insurance policy applicable at the time of the accident with respect to any person or organization legally responsible for the use of such automobile or with respect to which there is a- bodily injury liability bond or insurance policy applicable at the time of the accident but the company writing the same.denies coverage thereunder.”
Richard Pokerwinski, one of the insured defendants, was injured on August 10, 1963, in an auto-, mobile collision with a car driven by William D. Delaney. At that time William D. Delaney was insured for public liability and property damage by Banner Mutual Insurance Company. Defendants here initiated suit against the Delaneys in; the Wayne county circuit court on July 14, 1964. Banner Mutual Insurance Company was liquidated and went into receivership in 1966; thereupon defendants discontinued the lawsuit against the Delaneys.
Subsequently, defendants filed a claim under the above-quoted uninsured motorists clause and submitted the claim to the American Arbitration Association. Appellant, Michigan Mutual Liability Company, instituted an action for declaratory relief in the Wayne county circuit court to determine whether' appellees were covered under the uninsured motorists provision. The trial court, on these facts as stipulated by the parties and on briefs and • oral *478 argument, ruled in favor of defendants’ claim that they were covered by this clause. Michigan Mutual has appealed from this judgment.
In determining coverage or lack of coverage under this provision of the policy, the specific issue is whether William D. Delaney was driving an “uninsured automobile” within the meaning of the policy. Under the definition set out above, it is clear that an automobile can be uninsured in either of two ways. The first is by absence of a “bodily injury liability bond or insurance policy applicable at the time of the accident.” Delaney did have such a policy on his automobile, and the policy was in effect on the date of the accident. Virtually identical language was construed under identical circumstances in
Topolewski
v.
Detroit Automobile Inter-Insurance Exchange
(1967),
The definition considered in
Topolewsld
did not, however, provide the alternative method for an automobile to qualify as “uninsured” that is presented by this case. The second way an automobile may be “uninsured” within the specific definition of the policy is where an insurer “denies coverage” on a policy which was in fact in effect at the time of the accident. Michigan Mutual asserts that a denial of coverage requires some express or affirmative action hy the insurer; in support of this position,
*479
the most persuasive cases are
Federal Insurance Company
v.
Speight
(ED SC),
Defendants assert that this is a case where the language of the policy is open for construction by the court since there was an ambiguity in the meaning. They infer an ambiguity because courts of other States have arrived at differing conclusions as to the meaning of denial under an uninsured motorists provision, The existence of ambiguity is not shown in this manner. “Mere assertion of ambiguity does not establish ambiguity; it arises, if at all, from the language claimed to be ambiguous.”
Topolewski
v.
Detroit Automotile Inter-Insurance Exchange, supra,
at 289. The language used here is not to our minds ambiguous. The verb “to deny” is not equated, in the common understanding, with mere failure or inability: “denies” imports an affirmative refusal. Had coverage of an event such as we have here been intended, it could have been
*480
expressed easily by inserting some phrase like “failure to make the coverage effective, for whatever reason.” We must accord to the words actually used their normal and natural meaning. As was held in
Edgar’s Warehouse, Inc.,
v.
United States Fidelity & Guaranty Company
(1965),
“In
Sturgis National Bank
v.
Maryland Casualty Co.,
Denial of coverage is not the same as the much broader expression “failure of coverage,” which latter would include all cases of inability to collect full damages from an insurer. • “Denies coverage” carries an affirmative connotation, such as rejection of a policy holder as an insured, or assertion that a policy does not cover a particular accident. In the present case the insurer never disclaimed liability or denied coverage. It did not pay for quite a. different reason, its receivership and liquidation. True indeed the result is the same; but this does not justify judicial twisting of the English language.
To call a rose by a new, unappropriated name still., leaves the external reality a member of the genus. Rosa; by that method language grows and is enriched. To call a rose a buttercup would not change the reality either, but the expressive power of language would be diminished thereby — for if - such became accepted usage, the noun could no longer identify which specific flower the speaker intended. The latter is the type of extension of meaning urged ■ upon us by defendants. Courts should beware of making from hard cases not only bad law but bad *481 language. Language is the law’s tool, imprecise at best since it is not mathematical but employs the ever-changing vernacular. "What it has of precision should hot lightly be sacrificed. Changing common usage must be accepted of course, but as determined in the first instance by linguists and lexicographers, not by courts.
We hold accordingly that the insolvency and receivership of Banner Mutual, subsequent to the date of the accident, did not render William Delaney’s car an “uninsured automobile” within the meaning of Michigan Mutual’s uninsured motorists clause.
The judgment of the Wayne county circuit court is therefore reversed with the direction that judgment be entered in favor of Michigan Mutual Liability Company. Costs to appellant.