[Plaintiff, Appellant] Park Gil-seon (Attorney Kim Jae-kyung, counsel for the plaintiff)
[Defendant, Appellee] Ssangyong Fire & Marine Insurance Co., Ltd. (Attorney Hyun Jong-chan, counsel for the defendant)
[Judgment Below] Seoul High Court Decision 2004Na15302 rendered on June 15, 2005
[Order]
The part of the judgment below against the Plaintiff is reversed, and this part of the case is remanded to the Seoul High Court.
[Reasoning]
1. Judgment of the court below
Based on the evidence it adopted, the court below found the following facts: Park Yong-seop, who operates a building ventilation facility installation business with one or more regular employees under the trade name "Hwasin Engineering," entered into a comprehensive business automobile insurance contract with the Defendant regarding his Grace van with license plate number Seoul 6-Woo-4240 (hereinafter "the instant vehicle"); Article 11, Paragraph 2, Item 4 of the General Terms and Conditions of Business Automobile Insurance applicable to the above insurance contract provides that where a person injured in an accident during the operation of the insured vehicle is an employee of the insured who bears liability for damages and is eligible to receive industrial accident compensation, the Defendant is exempted from liability for the portion exceeding the scope covered by liability insurance; on June 1, 2001, at approximately 07:40, Eom Ki-yong, while driving the instant vehicle with the Plaintiff seated in the front passenger seat, was traveling along Lane 1 of a two-lane road (one lane each direction) located at Dongsin-ri, Angbo-myeon, Anseong-si, at the Anseong Public Sports Ground, heading from Jukssan toward Anseong, when he rear-ended a small cargo vehicle with license plate number Gyeonggi 93-Go-6279 traveling ahead in the same direction, thereby causing the Plaintiff to suffer injuries including a right tibial fracture and lacerations to the right lower leg; Park Yong-seop had subcontracted, for a contract price of 3,000,000 won, the factory ventilation facility installation portion of a construction project from DIO Co., Ltd., which had entered into a facility construction contract with MEMC Korea Co., Ltd. for a total contract amount of 62,700,000 won; and the Plaintiff, who, like Eom Ki-yong, was a worker temporarily employed by Park Yong-seop, was riding in the instant vehicle driven by Eom Ki-yong on the way to the construction site for the ventilation facility installation work when the instant accident occurred.
Based on these facts, the court below determined as follows: the instant accident occurred during the performance of duties for the business operated by Park Yong-seop and thus constitutes an industrial accident; the business operated by Park Yong-seop, having one or more regular employees, is a workplace naturally subject to the application of the former Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act (before amendment by Act No. 7049 of December 31, 2003; hereinafter "the Industrial Accident Insurance Act") pursuant to Article 5 thereof; although the ventilation facility installation work subcontracted to Park Yong-seop had a total contract amount of only 3,000,000 won and thus falls under a business excluded from application of the Industrial Accident Insurance Act under Article 3, Paragraph 1, Item 3 of the former Enforcement Decree of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act (before amendment by Presidential Decree No. 17977 of May 7, 2003), the original contractor, DIO Co., Ltd., had received the facility construction contract for a total contract price of 62,700,000 won from the ordering party, MEMC Korea Co., Ltd., and had subcontracted the ventilation facility installation portion thereof to Park Yong-seop; therefore, this constitutes a case where the business is performed through multiple levels of subcontracting as provided in Article 9, Paragraph 1 of the Industrial Accident Insurance Act, and thus the original contractor, DIO Co., Ltd., must be deemed the business owner of a business subject to the Industrial Accident Insurance Act; accordingly, the instant accident, which occurred while riding in the instant vehicle owned by Park Yong-seop and driven by Eom Ki-yong on the way to the ventilation facility installation construction site, constitutes an industrial accident occurring at a business at least subject to the industrial accident insurance in which DIO Co., Ltd. was enrolled; this falls under the case set forth in Article 11, Paragraph 2, Item 4 of the General Terms and Conditions of Business Automobile Insurance, whereby a person injured in an accident during the operation of the insured vehicle is an employee of the insured bearing liability for damages who is eligible to receive industrial accident compensation; and therefore, liability is exempted for the portion exceeding the scope covered by liability insurance.
2. Judgment of the Supreme Court
However, this determination by the court below is difficult to accept for the following reasons.
According to the record, Article 11, Paragraph 2, Item 4 of the General Terms and Conditions of Business Automobile Comprehensive Insurance applicable to the instant insurance contract provides: "Compensation shall not be provided for a person who is an employee of the insured bearing liability for compensation and who is eligible to receive disaster compensation under the Industrial Accident Insurance Act (compensation shall not be provided even where damages arise exceeding the scope of compensation under the said Act)." The purpose of the exemption clause in the Bodily Injury Liability Coverage II section of the Business Automobile Comprehensive Insurance Terms and Conditions, which states that "compensation shall not be provided for a person who is an employee of the insured bearing liability for compensation and who is eligible to receive disaster compensation under the Industrial Accident Insurance Act," should reasonably be interpreted as follows: since, for damages arising from industrial accidents occurring within the labor relationship between an employer and an employee, the Labor Standards Act (근로기준법), which governs labor relations, provides for various types of employer compensation liability, while the Industrial Accident Insurance Act establishes the industrial accident insurance system to guarantee such compensation liability, the purpose is to have damages suffered by an injured worker due to a work-related automobile accident subject to industrial accident insurance compensated through industrial accident insurance, and to exclude such damages, to the extent compensable through industrial accident insurance, from the scope of bodily injury liability coverage under automobile insurance, which is intended to cover liability for damages to third parties. However, if the insurer were exempted from liability under the exemption clause even where the damages suffered by an injured worker due to a work-related automobile accident exceed the scope of compensation under the Industrial Accident Insurance Act, this would mean that, notwithstanding the fact that the business owner, who is the insured under the automobile insurance, still bears liability for damages to the injured worker under the Automobile Compensation Guarantee Act (자동차손해배상보장법) or the Civil Act, etc., the insurer would be exempted from liability, effectively causing the insured to bear the liability for damages substantially by itself. This would run contrary to the purpose of automobile insurance, which is to cover the liability for damages that the insured bears toward a third party due to an accident involving the insured vehicle, and would be unfairly disadvantageous to the policyholder and the insured, who are the customers, under Article 6, Paragraphs 1 and 2, Item 1, and Article 7, Item 2 of the Act on the Regulation of Terms and Conditions (약관의 규제에 관한 법률), and would also constitute a transfer to the customer of risk that should be borne by the insurer, who is the business operator; therefore, the "portion in parentheses" of the exemption clause stating "compensation shall not be provided even where damages arise exceeding the scope of compensation under the Industrial Accident Insurance Act" is invalid pursuant to the respective provisions of the aforesaid Act (see Supreme Court en banc Decision 2003Da2802 rendered on March 17, 2005).
Nevertheless, the court below, premising that the parenthetical portion of the exemption clause under Article 11, Paragraph 2, Item 4 of the Business Automobile Comprehensive Insurance Terms and Conditions applicable to the instant insurance contract, stating that "compensation shall not be provided even where damages arise exceeding the scope of compensation under the Industrial Accident Insurance Act," is valid, determined that liability is exempted for the portion exceeding the scope covered by liability insurance, without conducting any examination whatsoever as to whether the Plaintiff suffered damages exceeding the scope of compensation under the Industrial Accident Insurance Act due to the instant accident. The judgment below thus contains an error of law in failing to exhaust the examination of the case due to a misunderstanding of the legal principles regarding the validity of the disaster compensation exemption clause in comprehensive automobile insurance, and it is clear that this error affected the outcome of the judgment.
3. Conclusion
Therefore, the part of the judgment below against the Plaintiff is reversed, and that part of the case is remanded to the court below for further hearing and determination, and it is so decided as set forth in the Order by the unanimous opinion of the participating Justices.
Presiding Justice Kim Young-ran
Justice Kang Shin-wook
Justice Ko Hyun-chul (Presiding Reporting Justice)