MacMillan v. John Deere Insurance

The dispositive issue in this case is whether the Financial Responsibility Law (FRL) requires John Deere to provide a defense to Trus Joist. In my view, the majority has given the wrong answer to that question. Trus Joist’s employees did, in fact, use Newton’s truck when they loaded and secured joists on it to be transported on the public highways. Therefore, the FRL required coverage for that use under John Deere’s policy.

To explain why, I begin with a step in the analysis that the majority omits, namely, whether loading and unloading constituted use of the truck under the policy. The…