With Mother’s Day around the corner, I walked into the Harley-Davidson shop for a gift. Yes, mom still rode her hog every weekend, and she liked to wear pink leather when she did.

I was surprised to find an entire section of pink leather goods in the back of the store. I was even more surprised to find my buddy Earl, an insurance man, there holding a pair of pink leather chaps up to the light as if inspecting them for flaws.

"Hey, Earl."

"Hey, Ace," he said, quickly placing the chaps back on the rack.

"Are you shopping for your mother, too?"

"Mother? Yeah, mother! Yeah, that’s why I’m here.

I didn’t know Earl too well, and suddenly I wanted to know him even less. So we both poked around the rack, trying to avoid eye contact. After a few minutes, I spotted the perfect pink leather vest that

would make mom the envy of the Growling Grannies Motorcycle Club. But when I reached for the vest, so did Earl. We grabbed it simultaneously, and, like two mothers holding on to the last Britni Barbie doll on Christmas Eve, neither was going to let go.

"Earl, how are we going to settle this? Like cavemen or insurance men?"

"Like insurance men, Ace. I have an insurance problem, and if you can solve it, the vest is yours."

"Deal."

"OK, Ace," Earl said, rubbing his hands together. "I have this commercial account that causes me more problems than a calculus book. My insured asked that we add a vehicle to the corporate auto policy and provide full liability and physical damage coverage. So we did. A few months later that vehicle was involved in a big wreck—property damage, physical damage to the vehicle, the works. That’s when I found out that the vehicle is titled in the name of the owner of the corporation personally and not in the name of the corporation itself. The owner apparently leased his personally owned vehicles to the company so that they can be insured under the BAP. Can you believe that?"

"Yes. It’s called lying to save money. It was invented by the very first man to ever file a tax return. Go on."

"Here’s my question: Is the insurance carrier going to deny coveragefor this vehicle since it was titled in a name other than the Named Insured?"

"Earl," I said, "you must not be a very good cook, ‘cause that answer is easy as pie."

Was Ace going to serve his answer a la mode? For help solving this mystery and to check your solution against Ace’s, click here.

Jonathan Hermann (hermannism@gmail.com ) is an IA contributing editor.