Category: Car Wrecks

As a general rule, if I give you my car keys, you have my insurance coverage protecting you.  My insurance coverage, referred to as the security covering the vehicle, is generally primary and your insurance coverage is secondary in that it only comes into play if my coverage becomes exhausted. So if you drink too much alcohol one night and ask your significant other to drive your vehicle, your insurance coverage effectively protects the both of you.

However, where people get into trouble is when that significant other drives your vehicle on a regular basis and you have not informed your insurance company of that fact.   With some regularity, I will see situations in which a boyfriend and girlfriend are living together but only the girlfriend, because she qualifies for a cheaper rate, has car insurance.  The problem is that the insurance company, because they did not know about the boyfriend, may not owe insurance coverage to the boyfriend.

By failing to inform the insurance company of the regular and ongoing use of your vehicle by another, you have basically provided the insurance company with a defense wherein they can claim they do not owe coverage for personal injury from the car wreck.  In essence, they can claim that they did not insure the risk involved with the other person, who may have had multiple car wrecks, so they do not owe him insurance coverage for the wreck.  If the insurance company succeeds in denying coverage for the wreck, the driver is then exposed to the claims arising from the car wreck unless he/she has other insurance they can fall back on to provide the necessary coverage.

This is why rental car companies always ask you who is going to be driving the vehicle.  The legal duties owed by the rental car company are to the renter and the authorized users of the vehicle only. So if you let your Aunt drive the rental car to the grocery store that night and she causes a car wreck, there may be a good chance that the rental car company does not have to provide her with insurance coverage for the wreck.

Please don’t misunderstand me.  Denying insurance coverage for a car wreck is not easy and contrary to several of the arguments I advanced above, I can cite some case law that state insurance companies owe coverage for at least the state minimum.  However, we all lead busy lives and the last thing we want to do is be involved in litigation over a car wreck much less litigation with an insurance company over whether they owe the coverage we have paid for.

I wanted to give you a tip generally about all areas of the law.  All areas of the law focus on what you can prove!  Unless we are dealing with expert testimony (e.g. doctors, accident reconstructionist, etc.), the law really is not concerned about theories or opinions.  As a result, documentation, in all areas of the law, is a huge essential to winning your claim or legal case.

For example, I am a personal injury attorney but I just helped a car wreck victim with her claim against a GAP insurance carrier; as her car loan exceeded the amount the insurance company claimed was the fair market value of the vehicle.  While I expected a battle with this insurance carrier as they had not responded to my prior letters, I was told they would be happy to process the claim once they were forwarded documents such as: the car’s repair estimates; the car’s payoff and: the original promissory note for the vehicle.  I believe my client may have already sent this material but, I cannot prove that she did or that she sent it to the correct fax number.  So now, after a long delay by the insurance carrier, we will send the material by certified mail and/or facsimile and follow up with a phone call making sure the material was received. Thereafter, I may still follow up with another letter confirming my future conversations with the carrier that the material was received and I can expect my client’s claim to be processed within “X” days.

So to expand this philosophy to other areas of the law, if you loan someone money, be sure to put the terms of the loan in writing and get their signature on the same; preferably with a notary public witnessing it. If you send money into a collection agency, be sure to send a letter with it or write on the check; for example, “payment of $500 with $2,000 still owing” or “full and final payment of all money owed”.  If you are dealing with a divorce and the ex-spouse does something against the Court’s Order, send yourself an e-mail describing the incident.  When you are ready to bring this up to your divorce lawyer or the Court, you will have an easy way to access the date of the event and its corresponding details.

All areas of the law work off of what can we prove!  And yet, we all forget the little details of events and conversations because our lives tend to run at 110 m.p.h.  Therefore, whether it is through e-mail, facsimiles or certified mail, document your conversations/actions when you are dealing with a possible legal dispute.  Also, unless the happenings of the incident are crucial to your case, you don’t have to incur legal fees by having an attorney review every little incident.  Rather, because you have all the details of the event saved, you can present all the incidents at once so either a pattern can be seen and/or the attorney can distinguish between the important and unimportant details.

I thought I would share with you some interesting points that I learned when I spoke to my own automobile insurance company about adding an elderly driver. In short, my father is going to be staying with me for a while.  So the question was whether he should keep his own car insurance or rather, eliminate his car insurance and merge his insurance policy with mine?

I was told that in order to get the cheapest rate, it would be best to put all the drivers and all the vehicles under one insurance policy since we all live in the same household. The problem is that if my father caused an automobile accident, that car wreck would cause an increase of my insurance premium that I could not get rid of for the next five years.  Considering that I will be adding a 16 year-old daughter to the insurance policy within the next year, the underwriter was justifiably concerned that I could be creating circumstances in which my rate would skyrocket.  So, we decided it would be best to insure our vehicles separately.

Of course, it should be noted that my father would be covered by my insurance coverage if he drove anyone of my cars but only on occasion. In the law, this is called the permissive use doctrine and it effectively says you have my insurance coverage protecting you while you are driving my vehicle if you are doing so with my permission and do not drive it on a regular basis.  If he drove my car regularly, that doctrine would not apply and the insurance company would have a defense to providing coverage for an insurance or injury claim; their argument being that they did not buy the risks associated with my father’s driving as they did not know he was using the vehicle on a regular basis.

One final point, my father ultimately indicated he did not want me on his car insurance policy because I drive my Volvo like it is the Batmobile.  Of course, I reminded him that he was the one who taught me how to drive.