A federal appeals court has reversed a lower court ruling and held an auto insurer is not obligated to defend a policyholder who waited 21 months to inform it of a car accident.

Carl Brumit, who owns Waterloo, Illinois-based Brumit Services Inc., a small business that performs residential concrete construction work, had a business auto liability policy with Columbus, Ohio-based State Auto Property and Casualty Insurance Co., according to Monday’s ruling by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago in State Auto Property and Casualty Insurance Co. v. Brumit Services Inc., an Illinois Corporation, et al.

The policy provided that State Auto had no duty to provide coverage unless Mr. Brumit complied with his duties under the policy, which included prompt notice of an accident or loss, said the ruling.

In September 2013, Mr. Brumit hit Delores Menard, 68, as he backed out of a parking lot with his insured truck, according to the ruling. He observed that Ms. Menard, who drove herself home, “may have had a scratch on her knee.”

But in June 2015, Ms. Menard and her husband sued Mr. Brumit, charging she had sustained “severe, permanent and permanently disabling injury, including injuries to her back and spine and the soft tissue structures thereof,” and loss of consortium, seeking damages of more than $50,000.

Mr. Brumit notified State Auto of the lawsuit the next day. State Auto then sought a declaratory judgment in U.S. District Court in East St. Louis, Illinois, that it had no duty to defend Mr. Brumit because he had breached the policy’s notice requirement.

The District Court ruled in Mr. Brumit’s favor, concluding the delay was “reasonable as matter of law.”

A unanimous three-judge panel overturned the lower court’s ruling. It was “Brumit’s responsibility to notify State Auto that he had been in an accident that might lead to a claim. He failed to do so, and his failure was inexcusable under Illinois law,” said the panel in ruling State Auto has no duty to defend or indemnify him.