underinsured motorist Archives - Louisville Accident & Injury Attorney Jim Desmond

Motorcycle Road Rage Accident in the News Leads to Questions of Uninsured and Underinsured Motorist Coverage

How important is uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage in Kentucky and Indiana? I was just on the Internet reading about an automobile accident that was the result of road rage. Basically, a motorcyclist kicked the door of a moving automobile, while both vehicles were traveling at highway speeds. The car swerved in the direction of the motorcyclist and ultimately lost control hitting several other vehicles and causing at least one to overturn.

The motorcyclist fled the scene of the wreck and the police do not know his identity or anything about his possible insurance coverage. Perhaps both the motorcyclist and the car driver were committing acts of road rage. At this point, it is clear that at least the motorcyclist was.

From a legal perspective, this car wreck clearly illustrates the need to have uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage on any vehicle you operate. For example, we don’t know who the motorcyclist is. So obviously, we can’t present a claim against his insurance coverage. This means that for any fault that might be assigned to the motorcyclist, we don’t have a source to recover from and may have to pay our damages out of our own pocket.

Further, even if we discover who the motorcyclist is, his insurance company might argue his act of road rage was an intentional act. Car insurance policies will cover negligence but typically exclude from coverage the damages arising from an intentional act. Lastly, even if we discover who the motorcyclist was, his actions caused damage to multiple vehicles and their passengers. There is no guarantee that he purchased enough liability insurance to cover all the claims, whether they are for injuries or property damage, to satisfy all the claims.

So as much as consumers don’t want to hear this, to be truly safe, you have to purchase the right kind of car insurance for your own for your own vehicle(s) before a car wreck ever occurs. In addition, you have to assume that the at-fault driver will have no insurance or not enough insurance.

If I represented someone who was injured in this car wreck, I would be looking to their own automobile insurance coverage, or the insurance for the vehicle they were riding in, to cover their damages. In this instance, I would be looking to my client’s collision coverage to cover the damage to his vehicle, med-pay or no-fault coverage to cover his medical bills and uninsured motorist coverage to cover his claim for pain and suffering. My hope would be that prior to the car wreck, my client had purchased at least $100,000 per person of uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage.

Now, I admit that I blog a lot on the need for uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage of at least $100,000 per person. Further, every time I raise this issue, I get one or two people who make comments like “ambulance chaser”. To put it respectfully, get your head out of the box!

The need for uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage exists because there is no guarantee in the law that the at-fault driver always has insurance, as they are legally required to do so. Further, in 1976, the Kentucky Legislature established that drivers had to have at least $25,000 in insurance coverage per person. Today, it takes $108,753 to have the same buying power as $25,000 did in 1976. However, for over 40 years now, Kentucky has not required an at-fault driver to have more insurance than $25,000 per person.

Very simply, every vehicle you own should have at least $100,000 per person of uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage on its insurance policy. If you don’t’ want to use an attorney to pursue these types of claims, you don’t have to. If you don’t even want to make a personal injury claim under these types of insurance policies, you don’t have to. However, if you put these types of insurance on your vehicle(s) before the car wreck ever occurs, you and your family have OPTIONS and choices YOU can make. Otherwise, you allow people like the motorcyclist who fled the scene of the wreck to make these choices for you.

What Does it Mean to Stack Insurance Coverage

What does it mean to stack insurance coverage in a Louisville area injury accident under Kentucky or Indiana Law? Kentucky law allows stacking of uninsured and underinsured motorist benefits depending upon how the insurance policy is written. Indiana does not allow insurance policies to be stacked.

Simply put, stacking refers to recovering insurance polices from more than one applicable policy. In other words, you have $25,000 of uninsured motorist coverage on your Volvo, Chevrolet and your motorcycle. Stacking would say that you have $75,000 of coverage because you have 3 policies of insurance with $25,000 on each policy.

By stacking coverage from more than one car or motorcycle insurance policy the injured party can increase the total amount of his recovery, assuming the value of his claim is worth more than the just the initial insurance policy.

For example, if you own three vehicles: a Buick, a Toyota and a Ford Truck. On all three of these vehicles, you made sure you put $100,000 of underinsured motorist coverage on each automobile policy. Well stacking means that since you effectively bought three $100,000 policies of underinsured motorist coverage, you have $300,000 of underinsured motorist benefits available to you; even though you were only in one of your vehicles at the time of the accident.

Insurance companies are not fond of stacking because it ultimately means that they may have to pay out more money to settle your personal injury claim. As a result, they have now written most insurance policies so that stacking does not occur. They do this by making it so that you have one policy of insurance that covers you no matter which vehicle you are riding in at the time of the wreck.

Now, let me explain to you how this concept can work when dealing with a car wreck. I had a gentlemen approach me about a case wherein his first medical bill was $22,000 and the at-fault driver was only insured for $25,000. I looked at the automobile policy and there was no underinsured motorist coverage on his Toyota. Nevertheless, we were able to get my client’s underinsured motorist coverage from his other automobile insurance that covered his Cadillac.

Very simply, to avoid stacking, his insurance company wrote the underinsured coverage so that it would apply regardless of the vehicle he was operating. In this case, it meant we had an additional $25,000 in insurance coverage we could go after.

Is it possible to stack insurance coverage in your situation, and how would that affect the amount of money you receive? I would need to see your whole policy and see how your benefits are defined therein. As a result, I suggest you contact me at (502) 609-7657 and we discuss this matter further.

The Three Most Important Types of Insurance for a Motorcycle or Car Wreck!

I am going to make this blog short as I have preached about this subject a 100 times over. However, I still believe that this is one of the most important issues facing any personal injury claim stemming from a car wreck or a motorcycle accident.

In short, I settled a personal injury claim this week for the maximum insurance coverage on several different insurance policies. The problem is that the medical bills, incurred by my client even though he did not cause the wreck, exceeded the maximum amount of insurance we could recover. In addition, I spoke to a single mother who was very savvy on financial issues but rides a motorcycle regularly. So of course, I had to lecture her about the proper insurance coverage and how a serious motorcycle wreck could alter her financial planning. Lastly, I signed up a gentleman today that was able to return to work after the car wreck but I am concerned that his arm may be fractured and he may need surgery to one of his knees.

All these examples illustrate that if you are lucky enough to be hit by a UPS truck, a personal injury lawyer may be able to recover the maximum value of your pain and suffering claim. However, if you were hit by someone driving an 1980 Ford Pinto, even a good personal injury lawyer will be stretching a dollar bill in 30 different directions to recover a fraction of what your claim is worth.

Very simply, on every car or motorcycle insurance policy that you or your family has, make sure you have at least $100,000 per person of Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage. While I practice law in Kentucky and Indiana, this advice really applies on a nationwide basis. Further, keep in mind that should you travel outside your home state and be involved in a car wreck, the protection of this insurance follows you. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, you need:

$100,000 per person of Uninsured Motorist Coverage;

$100,000 per person of Underinsured Motorist Coverage and;

$30,000 of no-fault or med-pay coverage.

Motorcycle Wreck in Indiana: Some immediate legal issues to address.

I had a phone call the other day in regard to a motorcycle wreck that happened in Corydon, Indiana. While I had about a thirty-minute phone call with the injured motorcyclist, I have not signed him up as a client yet. Nevertheless, I wanted to share with you some of the issues that are immediately present for motorcycle accidents, or car wrecks, occurring in Indiana.

First, in Indiana, drivers are only required to insurance coverage of at least $25,000 per person or $50,000 per wreck. As a result, when the motorcyclist told me had been hospitalized for several days following the wreck, I was immediately concerned as to whether the at-fault driver had enough insurance coverage just to satisfy his medical bills, much less his claim for pain and suffering.

Second, I told him to immediately reserve any med-pay coverage he has on his motorcycle insurance. In short, if the hospital bill is $40,000 and he only had $10,000 in med-pay, I don’t want the hospital to grab the $10,000 in med-pay and still assert a claim for a $30,000 unpaid balance. While it does not always happen this way, I would try to get the hospital bill paid by the health insurance carrier for the motorcyclist. This way, the $40,000 bill will hopefully be reduced to 30% to 50% of the original billed amount, $12,000 to $20,000. While the health insurance has a right to recover what they paid from the personal injury settlement (known as a subrogation claim), I want to use that $10,000 in med-pay to satisfy the health’s subrogation claim that in theory would much less. In essence, we have taken a dollar bill and stretched the heck out of it. By doing so, we have potentially decreased the amount of medical bills that have to be paid out of the motorcyclist’s recovery and consequently, increased the amount recovered by the motorcyclist for his pain and suffering claim.

Further, we immediately began to talk about underinsured motorist coverage on both his motorcycle and his automobile insurance. While typically automobile insurance carriers have policy provisions that exclude injuries that occur while riding a motorcycle, you have to check all possible sources of recovery when it appears that the value of the personal injury claim may exceed the available insurance coverage. The problem with underinsured motorist coverage in Indiana is that the motorcycle rider can only collect underinsured motorist coverage to the extent the at-fault driver does not have as much insurance coverage as you do. In other words, if the at-fault driver has $50,000 in insurance coverage and the injured motorcyclist has $100,000 of underinsured motorist coverage, your personal injury settlement would consist of $50,000 in recovery from the at-fault driver and $50,000 of underinsured motorist coverage. So even though you think you paid for $100,000 of underinsured motorist coverage on your own insurance policy, you find out that you can only make a claim for half that amount. This is a great example of how the law is not fair.

Lastly, I told the motorcyclist to make sure he fully considered the attorney’s fee he would owe in this matter. If an attorney charges him a 33.33% attorney’s fee, it could end up that the attorney fee’s might be $33,333 and yet because of the medical bills, the client might recover less than that amount. In my office we have an unwritten policy that prevents this from happening in non-litigation cases. However, whether it is through a reduced attorney’s fee up front or a policy favoring the client in regard to the reduction of the medical expenses, this is a consideration the motorcyclist has to consider when evaluating who to hire as a personal injury lawyer.

Tag: underinsured motorist

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