How much insurance is available in an auto accident?
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Auto accidents and the related insurance claims can become very complicated, fast. This is especially true when attempting to sort out how much insurance is available in an auto accident. When there are multiple vehicles and multiple injuries in your car crash you often must deal with multiple car insurance policies, multiple car policy limits, and multiple car insurance coverages.
Here’s an example from one auto accident.
In one such case, everyone was struggling in trying to figure out how much insurance was available in the auto accident. In this case American Family issued a auto accident insurance policy with a per person limit of $100,000 and a per occurrence limit of $300,000. The auto accident policy didn’t define the word occurrence. , one driver was driving in the wrong direction, southbound in the northbound lane. Three drivers swerve off the road, and a fourth driver strikes the first driver in a head-on auto accident. American Family that insured the wrongdoer says they have $300,000 to split among the injured parties. Was this all just one auto accident occurrence for which there is just $300,000 coverage available? American Family says, “Yes.” But wait.
Insurance Companies Don’t Get the Last Word.
The courts will get the last word in deciding how much insurance is available in an auto accident or car crash. The courts found there are at least three meanings of the word auto accident occurrence, one dealing with the cause, another deals with the effect, and another dealing with an event-triggering liability. If you apply the first auto accident insurance definition, you will look to see if there was one main uninterrupted cause for all the auto accident injuries. However, if you use the effect test, the auto accident policy limits extend to each injured party. However in Kansas at least the courts looked only at the cause. The case is hard to decide. Was the cause of the above accident a driver driving the wrong direction on the wrong side of a highway? Or was the cause of injuries the immediate cause of the first driver driving into the path of each of the other cars, in which case you would have multiples occurrences and more available insurance?
The court in Kansas came down with an opinion saying that collisions with multiple vehicles constitute on occurrence when the collisions are nearly simultaneous or separated by a short period. So is the above set of facts one occurrence? The court says maybe.
Maybe it’s time you called us to sort out all the auto accident insurance problems and get you the settlement you should have.