RILEY, J.
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II. UIM Coverage Limits
We commence our analysis with the definition of “underinsured motor vehicle,” as included in Indiana Code section 27-7-5-4(b):
[T]he term underinsured motor vehicle, subject to the terms and conditions of such coverage, includes an insured motor vehicle where the limits of coverage available for payment to the insured under all bodily injury liability policies covering persons liable to the insured are less than the limits for the insured’s underinsured motorist coverage at the time of the accident, but does not include an uninsured motor vehicle as defined in subsection(a).
Indiana Code section 27-7-5-2 governs the minimum UIM coverage limits that insurers must make available and sell or provide to their insureds. The statute provides, in pertinent part:
(a) The insurer shall make available, in each automobile liability or motor vehicle liability policy of insurance which is delivered or issued for delivery in this state with respect to any motor vehicle registered or principally garaged in this state, insuring against loss resulting from liability imposed by law for bodily injury or death suffered by any person and for injury to or destruction of property to others arising from the ownership, maintenance, or use of a motor vehicle, or in a supplement to such a policy, the following types of coverage:
. . .
(2) in limits for bodily injury or death not less than those set forth in [I.C. §] 9-25-4-5 under policy provisions approved by the commissioner of insurance, for the protection of persons insured under the policy provisions who are legally entitled to recover damages from owners or operators of uninsured or underinsured motor vehicles because of bodily injury, sickness or disease, including death resulting therefrom.
The uninsured and underinsured motorist coverages must be provided by insurers for either a single premium or for separate premiums, in limits at least equal to the limits of liability specified in the bodily injury liability provisions of an insured’s policy, unless such coverages have been rejected in writing by the insured. However underinsured motorist coverage must be made available in limits of not less than fifty thousand dollars ($50,000). At the insurer’s option, the bodily injury liability provisions of the insured’s policy may be required to be equal to the insured’s underinsured motorist coverage. Insurers may not sell or provide underinsured motorist coverage in an amount less than fifty thousand dollars ($50,000). . . . Uninsured motorist coverage or underinsured motorist coverage may be offered by an insurer in an amount exceeding the limits of liability specified in the bodily injury and property damage liability provisions of the insured’s policy.
Indiana Code section 9-25-4-5, which stipulates the monetary limits for bodily injury or death, provides in pertinent part, that:
The minimum amounts of financial responsibility are as follows: (1) subject to the limit set forth in subdivision (2), twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000) for bodily injury to or the death of one (1) individual; (2) fifty thousand dollars ($50,000) for bodily injury to or the death of two (2) or more individuals in any one (1) accident.
Focusing on this statutory scheme, Hannah now contends that Indiana Code section 27-7-5-4(b) requires a comparison of $25,000 per person bodily injury liability limit provided by Isaacs’ insurance policy to the $50,000 per person UIM limit under Anitra’s policy. Under this comparison, Hannah claims that Isaacs’ vehicle was underinsured because Isaacs’ per person liability limit was less than Anitra’s Grange Mutual per person UIM policy limit. In response, Grange Mutual asserts that Hannah’s reliance on the per person comparison is misplaced, and maintains that because more than one person was injured in the collision, the tortfeasor’s per accident liability limit is controlling. Accordingly, at odds are two approaches to determine whether a vehicle is underinsured: while Hannah favors the per person liability limit comparison, Grange Mutual urges us to adopt the per accident liability limit. Phrased as such, the issue before us requires us to interpret the statute.
A statute should be construed so as to ascertain and give effect to the intention of the legislature as expressed in the statute. Allstate Ins. Co. v. Sanders, 644 N.E.2d 884, 885 (Ind. Ct. App. 1994). In so doing, the objects and purposes of the statute in question must be considered as well as the effect and consequences of such interpretation. Id. at 885-886. When interpreting the words of a single section of a statute, this court must construe them with due regard for all other sections of the act and with regard for the legislative intent to carry out the spirit and purpose of the act. Id. at 886. We presume that the legislature intended its language to be applied in a logical manner consistent with the statute’s underlying policy and goals. Id. Also, we presume words appearing in the statute were intended to have meaning, and we endeavor to give those words their plain and ordinary meaning absent a clear manifested purpose to do otherwise. Id.
Indiana Code § 27-7-5-2 is a mandatory coverage, full-recovery, remedial statute. United Nat’l Ins. Co. v. DePrizio, 705 N.E.2d 455, 460 (Ind. 1999). It is directed at insurers operating within Indiana and its provisions are to be considered a part of every automobile liability policy the same as if written therein. Id. Underinsured motorist coverage is designed to provide individuals with indemnification in the event negligent motorists are not adequately insured for damages that result from motor vehicle accidents, and has generally been integrated into a given state’s uninsured motorist legislation by modifying the definition of an “uninsured motorist.” Id. at 459. As such, it serves to promote the recovery of damages for innocent victims of auto accidents with underinsured motorists. Id. Given the remedial nature of this objective, underinsured motorist legislation is to be liberally construed. Id. at 459-60.
The limits-to-limits comparison—be it per person or per accident—for the application of UIM coverage pursuant to I.C. § 27-7-5-2 has been the subject of an impressive body of current case law and both parties draw from this wealth of cases to support their respective positions. The seminal cases in this area are Allstate Ins. Co. v. Sanders, 644 N.E.2d 884 (Ind. Ct. App. 1994); Corr v. American Family Ins., 767 N.E.2d 535 (Ind. 2002); and Grange Ins. Co. v. Graham, 843 N.E.2d 597 (Ind. Ct App. 2006), trans. denied.
. . . .
A careful reading of Sanders, Corr, and Graham indicates that the case law speaks in terms of claimants, not injured individuals who potentially might file a claim as a determinative element in the application of the UIM coverage limits. In particular, Graham explicitly stated that the pivotal question as to the applicable UIM limit turns on the number of claimants under a single policy. See Graham, 843 N.E.2d at 601. Accordingly, comparing the per person liability limit of Isaacs’ policy, i.e., $25,000, with the per person UIM coverage available under the Grange Mutual policy, i.e., $50,000, we must reach the conclusion that Isaacs was underinsured. Therefore, Hannah is entitled to UIM coverage under Anitra’s policy.
III. Amount Available Under The Policy
Hannah next asserts that as a result of the accident, she recovered $5,100 from Isaacs’ liability policy, which is less than the minimum limits of liability for underinsured coverage in Indiana. Maintaining that I.C. § 27-7-5-2(a) mandates UIM coverage limit of $50,000 per person, Hannah requests this court to award her $44,900 of coverage under Anitra’s policy with Grange Mutual.
In response, Grange Mutual refers to Progressive Halcyon Ins. Co. v. Petty, 883 N.E.2d 854 (Ind. Ct. App. 2008), trans. denied. In Petty, another panel of this court concluded that the $50,000 threshold mentioned in Indiana Code section 27-7-5-2(a) refers only to the $50,000 per accident limit with the minimum per person UIM coverage set at $25,000. The Petty court’s reasoning was three-fold: (1) to conclude otherwise would render I.C. § 27-7-5-2(a) internally inconsistent and render meaningless its incorporation by reference of the “limits set forth in I.C. § 9-25-4-5;” (2) to prevent the potential for collusion between insureds; and (3) even though I.C. § 27-7-5-2 is a full recovery statute, this does not necessarily assure full indemnification for all potential damage to all potential insureds. See id. at 864-65.
However, we respectfully note that Petty is not binding on this court. Indiana does not recognize horizontal stare decisis and therefore, each panel of this court has coequal authority on an issue and considers any previous decision by other panels but ultimately is not bound by those decisions. In re C.F., 911 N.E.2d 657, 658 (Ind. Ct. App. 2009).
Although Petty relied on three considerations in concluding that the per person UIM coverage under the statute is a mandatory limit of $25,000, conspicuously absent from its analysis is a reference to the statute’s legislative history. A fundamental rule of statutory construction is that an amendment changing a prior statute indicates a legislative intention that the meaning of the statute has changed. DePrizio, 705 N.E.2d at 460. Such an amendment raises the presumption that the Legislature intended to change the law unless it clearly appears that the amendment was passed in order to express the original intent more clearly. Id.
As originally enacted, Indiana’s uninsured motorist statute mandated that insurance carriers offer uninsured motorist coverage in an amount equal to Indiana’s minimum financial responsibility requirements. (footnotes omitted). In 1982, the Legislature replaced the statute with I.C. § 27-7-5-2 requiring that insurers not merely offer but provide uninsured motorist coverage in an amount equal to the minimum financial responsibility requirements (but not exceeding the bodily injury and property damage limits) of the insured’s policy. (footnote omitted). In 1987, the Legislature broadened the scope of the statute by requiring insurers to provide underinsured motorist coverage in addition to uninsured
Accordingly, because of this amendment enacted in 1987, as of January 1, 1988, the minimum liability limits mandated by the statute for uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage was $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident. The Legislature’s purpose in amending the statute was to mandate that “an insured either be protected against loss caused by uninsured/underinsured drivers to the same extent as that insured has seen fit to indemnify others for his own potential liability[.]” Meridian Mut. Ins. Co. v. Richie, 540 N.E.2d 27, 30-31 (Ind. 1989), overruled on other grounds, 544 N.E.2d 488 (Ind. 1989).
On January 1, 1995, another amendment to the statute became effective.6 This amendment inserted the fifth and sixth sentences into the statute as it is currently enforced and provides:
However, underinsured motorist coverage must be made available in limits of not less than fifty thousand dollars ($50,000).
* * *
Insurers may not sell or provide underinsured motorist coverage in an amount less than fifty thousand dollars ($50,000).
After I.C. § 27-7-5-2(a) was amended in 1987, two important appellate decisions were issued which signaled the need for the 1994 amendment—effective on January 1, 1995. In Meridian Mut. Ins. Co., v. Richie, 540 N.E.2d 27, 30-31 (Ind. 1989), overruled, 544 N.E.2d 488 (Ind. 1989) and Landis v. American Interinsurance Exchange, 542 N.E.2d 1351 (Ind. Ct. App. 1989), both the supreme court and this court criticized the underinsured coverage as illusory. See Landis, 542 N.E.2d at 1354. Between 1988 and 1994, the tortfeasor responsible for bodily injury claims involving a motor vehicle would be insured for the minimum statutory amount pursuant to I.C. § 9-25-4-5 or be uninsured and a recovery would then be made through the uninsured endorsement subject to the minimum amounts mandated by I.C.§ 27-7-5-2(a). Under either scenario—I.C. § 9-25-4-5 or I.C. § 27-7-5-2(a)—claimants could not recover under the underinsured provision because either the liability coverage or the uninsured coverage would be available in the same amount. As a result, between 1988 and 1994, underinsured coverage in the minimum limits would never be payable when a recovery was sought from another Indiana motorist. It is generally known that an illusory coverage violates Indiana’s public policy interest. See Richie, 540 N.E.2d at 31. Heeding the appellate opinions, the 1994 amendment then required that “underinsured motorist coverage must be made available in limits of not less than fifty thousand dollars ($50,000).” (footnote omitted). See I.C. § 27-7-5-2(a) (emphasis added).
We are mindful that courts may assume that an enactment of the Legislature changing a statute was a response to an interpretation placed upon that statute by the courts. Huff v. Biomet, Inc., 654 N.E.2d 830, 834 (Ind. Ct. App. 1995). In that regard, when the Legislature replaces the provision of an act which has been construed by the courts, it is presumed that it is responding to those appellate decisions which construed the legislation. Egan v. Bass, 644 N.E.2d 1272, 1274 (Ind. Ct. App. 1994).
It is evident that in the years since its inception, Indiana’s uninsured/underinsured motorist statute has undergone significant modification, culminating into an expansion of the underinsured liability coverage. See DePrizio, 705 N.E.2d at 461. We find that this history of expanding the availability of uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage manifests an intent by our Legislature to give insureds the opportunity for full compensation for injuries inflicted by financially irresponsible motorists. Thus, for the 1994 amendment to have any purpose, both the per person limit and per accident limit for underinsured coverage must be read as being $50,000 per person; reading the provision otherwise would make the coverage illusory as discussed in Richie. See Richie, 540 N.E.2d at 30-31. Accordingly, today, we expressly disagree with Petty, which lowered the UIM coverage to $25,000 per person and placed claimants back in the position they held between 1988 and 1994 when claimants paid a premium for mandatory UIM coverage that was illusory and allowed insurance companies to receive a windfall by collecting premiums without carrying the corresponding risk of loss. Because we now hold that the mandatory per person limit for underinsured coverage pursuant to I.C. § 27-7-5-2 is $50,000, we conclude that Hannah’s available UIM coverage under Grange Mutual’s coverage is $44,900.
Conclusion
Based on the foregoing, we conclude that Hannah is entitled to underinsured motorist coverage under Grange Mutual’s policy for an available per person limit of $44,900.
Reversed.
ROBB, C.J., and BROWN, J., concur.