Utah Law Talk

It was late in the evening when I met with the family in the waiting room at LDS Hospital. I learned that my client’s wife had been returning home about a week earlier when a drunk driver ran a red light and t-boned her on the driver’s side door. She was still in a coma, with family holding vigil over her there in the ICU. The situation looked bleak. The husband told me the bills were already easily past $100,000 and they had no health insurance. Unfortunately, it turns out the other driver had no insurance at the time of the crash. And my client had only gotten the Utah minimum, which was $25,000. He also only carried $25,000 for un-insured motorists and under-insured motorists. We found out later that the person that struck his wife had no significant assets and was most likely “judgment proof.” The reality is that most people who drive around without insurance have no real assets. In the end, I had to turn this case down. My client’s insurance company was willing and anxious to pay the $25,000 for this claim. They didn’t need me. Sadly, I don’t think this amount would even cover the first day for her in the hospital.

What this man did not realize is how relatively cheap additional insurance coverage would have been. While many people opt to get minimum coverage because the premium is less, it really doesn’t cost that much extra to get a policy of at least $100,000. Even getting a $500,000 policy is a relative steal when you consider the peace of mind it gives you. It is like having a disability policy for you when you are injured while driving.

So take the lizard’s advice to heart: take 15 minutes and call your insurance agent. Make sure your policy includes healthy limits on uninsured coverage as well as “under-insured coverage.” This coverage is just as important as uninsured motorist coverage. It is used for those times when the other driver doesn’t have enough insurance to compensate for your injury claim. Returning to the story, while insurance limits of even half a million would not have been enough to compensate his wife for this kind of catastrophic head injury, it would have provided the family real relief from creditors and money for rehabilitation for his wife.

Published by: Ron Kramer

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 9th, 2008 at 11:45 am and is filed under Insurance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.