In Vons Companies, Inc. v. United States Fire Ins. Co. (2000) 78 Cal.App.4th 52, after an accident covered by general liability policies issued by different insurers to lessee Vons and landlord Longs (with Vons an additional insured on the Longs policy), each policy had a "self-insured retention (SIR)" provision making the insured responsible for the first $ 1 and $ .5 million, respectively, and Vons and Longs settled a third-party action, Vons paying $ 539,905 of its own funds and receiving $ 1 million from the insurer under the Longs policy. The issue was whether receipt of those insurance funds put Vons over the $ 1 million SIR under its own policy, so that its insurance would cover the $ 540,000. The SIR, an endorsement, did not speak specifically to the question but said the endorsement was subject to the limits, exclusions, conditions, etc, of the policy. (Id. at pp. 55-57.) Vons held the SIR satisfied. Starting with the meaning of the term self-insured, the court found the term ambiguous and not necessarily restricted to out-of-pocket funds as a matter of case law precedent. (Vons, supra, 78 Cal.App.4th at pp. 59-62.) Then, observing that this SIR endorsement was made subject to the provisions in the rest of the policy, the court turned to an other-insurance clause, which referred to "'other valid and collectible insurance'" available to the insured for a covered loss and, like the provision before us, made any other insurance primary and the subject policy secondary or excess. (Id. at p. 62.) The court was perplexed why--if the effect of an SIR standing alone is to render the self-insured portion primary--there was a need to make the SIR also subject to the other-insurance clause in the policy, and it held the insurer's failure to address that redundancy a waiver. (Id. at p. 63.) Alternatively, it found that payment out of insurance proceeds was allowed, reasoning: "That is the most reasonable construction given that the SIR was subordinate to the other insurance provisions. If nothing else, the conflict between the insurer's interpretation of the SIR and the other insurance provisions ren-ders the SIR ambiguous on this point. Nowhere does the SIR expressly state that Vons itself, not other insurers, must pay the SIR amount. Because the SIR was subject to the other insurance provisions, which also made the Vons policy excess if there were another policy covering the accident, Vons as a reasonable insured could read the policy as permitting the use of other insurance proceeds to cover the SIR amount." (Id. at p. 64.)