Date: Feb 13, 2026

Rejecting “Super-Excess” and Limiting “Insured Contract” Overrides: Equal Priority Where Both Motor-Carrier Policies Are Excess

Introduction

Great West Casualty Co. v. Nationwide Agribusiness Insurance Co. (7th Cir. Feb. 11, 2026) addresses a familiar but consequential coverage-allocation problem arising from trucking operations: when two commercial auto liability policies both cover a tractor-trailer accident, which insurer pays first?

The underlying accident was a fatal June 2, 2021 collision near Sycamore, Illinois, involving a tractor-trailer driven by Robert D. Fisher, an agent of Deerpass Farms Trucking, LLC-II (“Deerpass Trucking”), and an SUV driven by Patrick J. Brennan. Brennan’s estate sued in Illinois state court, naming (among others) Fisher, Deerpass Trucking, affiliated entities, and Conserv FS, Inc. (“Conserv”), the trailer owner.

Coverage was undisputed: both insurers agreed their policies covered Fisher, Deerpass Trucking, and Conserv. The dispute was purely about priority under each policy’s “Other Insurance” provisions. Great West (insuring the tractor; $1M) sought a declaration that it was excess (and even “excess over” Nationwide). Nationwide (insuring the trailer; $2M) sought a declaration that Great West was primary.

Sitting in diversity, the Seventh Circuit applied Illinois contract/insurance law and affirmed the district court’s conclusion: both policies were excess in the circumstances and therefore shared equal payment priority.

Summary of the Opinion

Great West is excess, not primary. The court held Great West’s “Other Insurance” paragraph 5.b applies to a leased tractor and—because the lease required the lessor to hold the lessee harmless—paragraph 5.b(2) makes Great West “Excess over any other collectible insurance.”
The “insured contract” override does not apply. Great West’s paragraph 5.g would make its coverage primary only for liability assumed under an “insured contract.” The Trailer Interchange Agreement between Deerpass Trucking and Conserv was not an “insured contract” because it carved out losses caused by Conserv’s own negligence and therefore did not clearly shift Conserv’s tort liability to Deerpass Trucking.
No “super-excess” tier. The court rejected Great West’s attempt to create a third tier of priority (“super excess”) from the phrase “excess over any other collectible insurance,” declining to recognize a novel hierarchy not supported by Illinois law.
Result: Both policies are excess with equal priority; costs are allocated pro rata by limits (a point the parties did not challenge on appeal).

Analysis

Precedents Cited

The opinion is methodologically grounded in Illinois contract interpretation principles and in the Erie obligation to predict state law. The cited authorities fall into four functional categories.

1) Federal appellate standards and Erie/choice-of-law framework

Tech. Sec. Inte-gration, Inc. v. EPI Techs., Inc., 126 F.4th 557, 560 (7th Cir. 2025): supplied the de novo summary-judgment standard, ensuring the court independently reviewed the record and policy text.
Hess v. Biomet, Inc., 105 F.4th 912, 917 (7th Cir. 2024): reaffirmed that federal courts sitting in diversity apply the forum state’s law to contract interpretation—here, Illinois.
Stampley v. Altom Transp., Inc., 958 F.3d 580, 586 (7th Cir. 2020): emphasized that insurance and contract priority rules are matters of state law, reinforcing the court’s reluctance to innovate a “super-excess” doctrine absent Illinois authority.

2) Illinois rules for construing insurance policies (and the “no superfluity” canon—tempered)

Sproull v. State Farm Fire & Cas. Co., 184 N.E.3d 203, 209 (Ill. 2021): treated insurance policy construction as ordinary contract interpretation focused on the parties’ intent expressed in policy language.
Acuity v. M/I Homes of Chicago, LLC, 234 N.E.3d 97, 105 (Ill. 2023), and Cres-cent Plaza Hotel Owner, L.P. v. Zurich Am. Ins. Co., 20 F.4th 303, 308 (7th Cir. 2021): reinforced the primacy of the policy’s text and the “most natural and reasonable reading” of the contract as a whole.
Land of Lincoln Goodwill Indus., Inc. v. PNC Fin. Servs. Grp., Inc., 762 F.3d 673, 679 (7th Cir. 2014): supplied the holistic-reading directive and the preference to avoid interpretations rendering provisions superfluous—central to rejecting Nationwide’s attempt to read “hired or borrowed” so narrowly that the “lessor/lessee” subparts would be meaningless.
State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. v. Elmore, 181 N.E.3d 865, 871 (Ill. 2020): provided the Illinois ambiguity standard—only language susceptible to more than one reasonable interpretation is ambiguous; “creative possibilities” are insufficient.
Clanton v. Oakbrook Healthcare Ctr., 226 N.E.3d 1266, 1275 (Ill. 2023): reiterated the preference for interpretations that do not render contract language superfluous—invoked by Great West to argue its “excess over any other collectible insurance” must do extra work beyond “excess.”
Stone v. Signode Indus. Grp. LLC, 943 F.3d 381, 387-88 (7th Cir. 2019), and Sterling Nat'l Bank v. Block, 984 F.3d 1210, 1218 (7th Cir. 2021): tempered Clanton/Land of Lincoln by recognizing redundancy is common; the anti-superfluity canon is a preference, not an absolute command.
Great W. Cas. Co. v. Robbins, 833 F.3d 711, 717-18 (7th Cir. 2016) (quoted in Crescent Plaza): underscored that while redundancy can exist, courts should not interpret provisions so they become completely empty of effect—used here to frame (and ultimately reject) Great West’s “super-excess” theory as unnecessary to give the policy meaning.
Outboard Marine Corp. v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., 607 N.E.2d 1204, 1219 (Ill. 1992): supported the idea that anti-superfluity yields when an interpretation would make the policy “inconsistent or inherently contradictory,” a point the court used to show how introducing “super excess” would create coherence problems within Great West’s own “Other Insurance” framework.

3) Waiver / unsupported equitable argument

Puffer v. Allstate Ins. Co., 675 F.3d 709, 718 (7th Cir. 2012): used to dismiss Nationwide’s equity-based insinuation of “conspiracy” in structuring the Deerpass Lease as legally unsupported and effectively waived absent legal authority and evidentiary support.

4) The “insured contract” inquiry and indemnity-law clarity requirement

Hankins v. Pekin Insur-ance Co., 713 N.E.2d 1244 (Ill. App. Ct. 1999): the controlling analog for whether an indemnity provision constitutes an “insured contract” requiring assumption of another’s tort liability. Hankins held that an indemnity clause is not an “insured contract” unless it “clearly, explicitly, and unequivocally” shows an intent to indemnify the indemnitee for the indemnitee’s own negligence.
Buenz v. Frontline Transp. Co., 882 N.E.2d 525, 533 (Ill. 2008): reinforced Hankins and the Illinois Supreme Court’s reluctance to “strain” an indemnity clause to cover an indemnitee’s negligence when the contract limits indemnity to the indemnitor’s negligence.

5) The failed “super-excess” authority

Truck Insurance Exchange v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co., 428 N.E.2d 1183 (Ill. App. Ct. 1981): Great West’s principal citation for giving special effect to “excess over any other valid and collectible insurance.” The Seventh Circuit distinguished it: priority there turned on a lease allocating responsibility (and insurer acceptance of that lease-based allocation), not on recognizing a “super-excess” tier from wording differences.
New Amsterdam Cas. Co. v. Certain Underwriters at Lloyds, London, 216 N.E.2d 665 (Ill. 1966), and U.S. Fire Ins. Co. v. Wilson Driveaway, Inc., 674 F. Supp. 640 (N.D. Ill. 1987): acknowledged by the court (via footnote) as not addressing the specific comparison at issue—“excess” versus “excess over any other collectible insurance”—and thus not persuasive authority for Great West’s proposed hierarchy.

Legal Reasoning

1) Reading “hired or borrowed” to include a lease

Nationwide’s first route to primary coverage was semantic: Deerpass Trucking “leased” the tractor, and Great West’s paragraph 5.b is triggered only when a covered auto is “hired or borrowed.” The court rejected the argument as inconsistent with the policy’s internal structure.

Critically, subparagraphs 5.b(1) and 5.b(2) are explicitly built around a “lessor” and “lessee.” If “hired or borrowed” excluded leased equipment, the lessor/lessee subparts would be practically incapable of application, violating the “contract as a whole” and “meaning to every provision” approach drawn from Land of Lincoln Goodwill Indus., Inc. v. PNC Fin. Servs. Grp., Inc..

Once paragraph 5.b applies, Nationwide effectively conceded the consequence: paragraph 5.b(2) makes Great West excess where the written lessor-lessee agreement requires the lessor to hold the lessee harmless—undisputed under the Deerpass Lease.

2) Rejecting an equity-based “conspiracy” objection

Nationwide also attacked the arrangement as unfair: a tractor lease between related entities could “bind” another insurer (Nationwide) into paying first. The court dispatched this on procedural and substantive grounds—there was no legal doctrine or record evidence offered to justify rewriting policy priority, invoking Puffer v. Allstate Ins. Co. to characterize the contention as unsupported (and therefore not a basis for reversal).

3) “Insured contract” does not apply where the indemnity clause preserves the indemnitee’s own-negligence exposure

Nationwide’s strongest argument relied on Great West paragraph 5.g: “Regardless” of other priority rules, Great West becomes primary for liability assumed under an “insured contract.” Great West’s policy defined “insured contract” as a contract under which the insured “assume[s] the tort liability of another” to pay for third-party bodily injury or property damage.

The Trailer Interchange Agreement did include broad indemnity language, but it opened with a limitation: “Except to the proportionate extent that any Losses are caused by the negligent acts or omissions of [Conserv]…” That carveout mattered more than the breadth that followed.

Applying Hankins v. Pekin Insur-ance Co. and Buenz v. Frontline Transp. Co., the court treated Illinois law as demanding clarity before concluding that one party has assumed another’s tort liability—especially liability for the indemnitee’s own negligence. Because the agreement expressly preserved Conserv’s own-negligence share (if any), Deerpass Trucking did not “clearly, explicitly, and unequivocally” assume Conserv’s tort liability in the way required to trigger the “insured contract” override.

The court also rejected Nationwide’s attempt to make the analysis fact-dependent on the underlying complaint (i.e., that Conserv was sued only vicariously and not for independent negligence). For coverage priority, the interpretive question was the contract’s scope, not whether Conserv was actually negligent in the litigation.

4) No recognition of “super-excess” from “excess over any other collectible insurance”

Great West’s cross-appeal pressed a novel tiered-priority theory: Nationwide is “excess,” but Great West is “excess over any other collectible insurance,” making it “super excess.” The Seventh Circuit declined to create this third tier for three principal reasons:

Absence of Illinois authority: Under Hess v. Biomet, Inc. and Stampley v. Altom Transp., Inc., the court’s job is to apply (not innovate) state law. Great West could not point to an Illinois decision recognizing “super excess” as a distinct, enforceable priority level in this context.
Distinguishability of cited precedent: Truck Insurance Exchange v. Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. turned on a lease-based allocation accepted by an insurer, not on a linguistic escalation from “excess” to “excess over.”
Coherence and drafting reality: The court treated the phrase as permissible redundancy under Stone v. Signode Indus. Grp. LLC and Sterling Nat'l Bank v. Block. Recognizing “super excess” risked internal inconsistency because other Great West “Other Insurance” provisions contemplated only two bases—primary or excess—and did not integrate a third tier.

Impact

The decision’s likely influence is practical and immediate for trucking and logistics coverage disputes involving tractors and interchanged trailers, particularly where (1) equipment is leased among carriers or affiliates, and (2) trailer interchange agreements include indemnity language.

“Insured contract” overrides will be harder to invoke in Illinois without unmistakable assumption of the other party’s tort liability. Drafting that merely indemnifies for the indemnitor’s conduct—especially with an express carveout for the indemnitee’s negligence—will not convert an insurer’s position from excess to primary.
Policy language will be read structurally, not atomistically. The court’s treatment of “hired or borrowed” underscores that Illinois-style whole-contract interpretation can defeat hyper-literal arguments that would nullify surrounding text (here, “lessor/lessee” references).
“Super-excess” escalation is disfavored absent clear state-law endorsement. Insurers litigating priority in Illinois (and in the Seventh Circuit applying Illinois law) should expect “excess” disputes to remain largely binary (primary vs. excess), with equal-priority outcomes where both policies are excess, rather than a judicially created hierarchy based on rhetorical intensifiers.
Contract drafting consequences: Parties seeking to force a primary/excess outcome through indemnity should expect Illinois courts to require explicit, unequivocal language if the goal is to shift exposure for the indemnitee’s own negligence. Conversely, parties seeking to avoid triggering “insured contract” clauses have a roadmap: preserve an indemnitee-negligence carveout and limit the assumption of tort liability.

Complex Concepts Simplified

Primary vs. excess insurance: If two policies cover the same loss, the primary policy pays first (up to its limit). The excess policy pays only after the primary limit is exhausted. “Other Insurance” clauses are the policy text that decides which role applies in overlapping coverage scenarios.
“Other Insurance” clauses (in trucking policies): These provisions often allocate priority based on ownership (who owns the tractor or trailer), and on operational relationships (e.g., leased equipment, interchange agreements). Here, Nationwide was excess because its covered trailer was connected to a tractor it did not own; Great West was excess because its insured tractor was leased under a hold-harmless arrangement.
“Insured contract”: In liability policies, an “insured contract” commonly means a contract where the insured has agreed to take on someone else’s tort liability to a third party. Under Illinois law (as applied through Hankins and Buenz), courts require clear, explicit language before concluding the insured assumed liability for the other party’s own negligence.
Indemnity carveout for the indemnitee’s negligence: A carveout (“except to the extent caused by [Indemnitee]’s negligence”) signals the indemnitor is not taking responsibility for the indemnitee’s own fault. That limitation can prevent the agreement from qualifying as an “insured contract” that would otherwise change insurance priority.
“Super-excess”: A proposed third level beyond “excess,” argued to arise when a policy says “excess over any other collectible insurance.” The court treated this as drafting redundancy rather than a distinct priority tier recognized by Illinois law.

Conclusion

Great West Casualty Co. v. Nationwide Agribusiness Insurance Co. reinforces two key Illinois-law predictions in the trucking-insurance context: (1) “insured contract” priority overrides require a clear assumption of another party’s tort liability—language that preserves the indemnitee’s own-negligence exposure will not suffice; and (2) courts will not create a “super-excess” tier from amplified “excess” phrasing absent supporting state authority, especially where doing so complicates the policy’s internal structure.

The doctrinal result is straightforward but significant: when both policies are properly characterized as excess under their “Other Insurance” clauses, they share equal payment priority rather than being reordered by rhetorical gradations of “more excess.”