Hello All,
The following was posted on another forum and may be of interest to you.
The message is that it is important to keep up your own Uninsured Motorist Insurance.
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Comment by John E,
With its archaic policy limit minima, California essentially becomes a “no fault” insurance state by forcing us to invest in underinsured motorist coverage (which I do carry), which in this case covered 85% of the payout. The sad fact is that the offending motorist will keep driving and menacing, either underinsured or perhaps entirely uninsured.
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Cyclists and Triathletes,
Following is a free bit of legal strategy that may prove helpful to you should you be seriously injured and the insurance policy of the defendant is not sufficient to make you whole. I’m very pleased to report that we just received an arbitration award for a badly injured triathlete who was hit while riding his bike. He had a permanent metal rod implanted in his leg because the bones were shattered.
My client was able to recover from three different insurance policies for a total of $100k. It looked as though he’d only be able to recover (15k) from the negligent motorist and his own underlying policy of (50k) which with offsets and credits would limit it recovery to 50k for this very life changing serious injury. But we decided to pursue the resident relative provision on his parent’s homeowners policy. This means that even if you live away from your relatives house, in many cases you can still recover if you have sufficient connection to the home.
So in the end we were able to recover 15k from the negligent motorist,another 50k from my client’s own auto policy, then 100k from his parents resident relative provision in their policy. After legal offsets & credits he received a net of 100k in what was almost limited to a 50k case…that deserved more. I see this situation far too often. This is why you need great (under insured) insurance coverage in case the other guy who hits you is under insured.(read my article on my web site called “Cyclists need strong insurance coverage”…aka don’t skimp on insurance.)
It took a couple of years to prevail, but like most athletes his stamina and patience paid off against bigger odds of fighting three insurance companies.
As you all may know these types of cases are taken on a contingency basis(no recovery-no fee), and I received help from a few friends that all came together to help the victim and I share credit (and attorney fees) with them. They took a chance we might not even recover a dime on a very tough situation, but the wise judge did the right thing and followed the law. I do have to say that we used technology in the form of the excel program and illustrative pie charts to help quantify the case. My thanks to Ron Grayson for his sage help in this area. He is a wizard.
In sum, I loved making the phone call to my client saying we finally won, even after overcoming a lot of delay tactics by the insurance defense. Justice finally prevailed for my client.
Love to you all.
Ride safe, Ride strong!
Richard L. Duquette
Criminal Defense &
Bicycle Injury Lawyer since 1983
Carlsbad, CA
760-730-0500
www.911law.com <http://www.911law.com/>