133 A.D.2d 765 | N.Y. App. Div. | 1987
In a proceeding pursuant to CPLR 7503 to stay arbitration under an uninsured motorist endorsement of an insurance policy, the appeal is from a judgment of the Supreme Court, Nassau County (Wager, J.), entered May 27, 1986, which granted the application.
Ordered that the judgment is affirmed, without costs or disbursements.
The appellant suffered personal injuries when a rear relief spring from an unidentified truck came loose and struck his windshield, causing him to loose control of his vehicle and strike another automobile. Contending that he was the victim of a hit-and-run accident within the meaning of Insurance Law § 5217, the appellant sought arbitration of his claim under his policy’s uninsured motorist endorsement. Thereafter, the petitioner Utica Mutual Insurance Company sought a permanent stay of arbitration on the ground that the appellant had failed to establish the statutory requirement of "physical contact” with the alleged hit-and-run vehicle (see, Insurance Law § 5217). The court granted the petition and stayed arbitration. We affirm.
Insurance Law § 5217 provides that statutory uninsured motorist benefits are not available in a hit-and-run accident situation "unless the bodily injury to the qualified person arose out of physical contact of the motor vehicle causing the injury with the qualified person or with a motor vehicle which the qualified person was occupying”. The physical contact requirement has as its purpose the deterrence of "fictitious claims, too easily contrived in the absence of physical contact”