Uninsured and Underinsured Motorist Claims
In the most serious car accident cases, it often happens that the other driver's insurance coverage falls short of what it will take to cover the whole range of your losses. If your total damages are $200,000 and the other driver's insurance limits are only $100,000, you've got a problem.
In the ideal situation, a car accident victim presents a damages claim to the insurer for the driver at fault and collects money up to the limit of the liability coverage, then presents the claim to his or her own insurer and collects the difference up to the limit of the underinsured motorist policy.
It's seldom that simple. Your own insurer is very likely to fight you on the amount of your damages or try to avoid liability altogether on the basis of some procedural fine print in the policy. To get the full benefit of your UIM coverage, you might have to prove your case all over again. Your own insurance company may be not your friend, and may not even be a good neighbor – often these insurers need to be reminded of bad faith laws.
Uninsured motorist coverage under your own policy is meant to protect you if the other driver has no insurance or cannot be identified, as in the case of a hit-
In our experience, your own insurer will likely pay the property loss part of your claim without any problems, and then fight you tooth and nail on your injury claims. One way to improve your chances for a full settlement is to locate alternative defendants who might be at least partially responsible for your losses, such as a county engineering department responsible for negligent placement of road signs or signals.
We're prepared to prove your personal injury or wrongful death claim against your own insurer under your uninsured motorist policy, because that's what it usually comes to. Essentially, we have to prove the absence of your own negligence as a way of establishing the fault of the missing other driver. We also have to prove your damages, often through experts, in carefully documented and clearly presented terms. We've done it before for many clients, and we can do it for you.
This website is not meant to serve as legal advice of any kind and is only intended for informational, educational, and entertainment purposes only. As Personal Injury Law varies from state to state we recommend you seek legal advice from an attorney or law firm in your state. The information used on this website is copyrighted and used with permission by Dallas Norton, Esq. Denver's Personal Injury Attorney serving personal injury victims in Denver Metro Area and all of Colorado