Getlin

This appeal raises the question of the interpretation of an exemption clause in a liability insurance policy. The defendant insurance company won in the court below and the plaintiff appeals.

The factual background is uncomplicated and undisputed. At the time of the accident out of which this litigation arose Harold M. Kalahar was the owner of a Chevrolet station wagon. Kalahar hired various persons in Iowa and Nebraska for the purpose of soliciting magazine subscriptions in various towns from state to state throughout the western United States. One of the persons he hired for this purpose was Corinne Getlin for whose estate the present plaintiff is administrator. Kalahar furnished free transportation to the solicitors from state to state and city to city. He designated one Philip Rodgers, also a member of the soliciting group, as driver of this Chevrolet station wagon. On August 31, 1947, Rodgers drove the station wagon from Spokane, Washington, where the group had been soliciting subscriptions, to Portland, Oregon, where they were going to do like soliciting. This transportation was “pursuant -to their respective contracts of employment with Kalahar.”

There was an accident on…