OK, class, show of hands (insurance agents and personal-injury lawyers, keep yours down).
How many know what uninsured and under-insured motorist insurance policies are? I thought so.
UIMs, as they are referred to, are coverages bought by you insuring you for injury or property damage suffered by you which was caused by someone else’s act involving a motor vehicle, and that someone else did not have liability insurance coverage, or enough of it, to cover your claim against them.
In Illinois, if someone causes injury or property damage to another for which they are liable under the law, that someone (the “tortfeasor”) is obligated to compensate the injured party with money.
Typically, as part of your automobile policy package covering your own car, you buy liability insurance covering you if someone makes a claim against you for your alleged wrongful acts. Indeed, Illinois law requires drivers to operate vehicles that have a minimum amount of liability coverage.
But if the tortfeasor blows a red light and crashes into you and they don’t have liability insurance or not enough of it, this is where your purchase of UIM coverage comes into play. You make the claim against your insurance carrier. The burden is on you to prove the tortfeasor had no liability coverage or not enough, and that your damage/injury is of a type covered by your UIM policy. You must typically further prove that their action makes them liable to you under the law for the damages/injury and prove what the value of your damage/injury is.
On under-insured claims where the tortfeasor has some liability coverage, the value of your injury must be in excess of the tortfeasor’s insurance limit in order for your UIM to pay you. So, if the tortfeasor has only $25,000 of liability coverage for the accident, and your injury is worth $50,000, your UIM policy would typically pay the difference.
Usually, UIM policies require the act to have arisen out of somebody’s use of a motor vehicle. Illinois courts have ruled that you do not have to be occupying your own car that is listed in your auto policy for your UIM to kick in. In other words, you could be occupying another uninsured car as a passenger if you get injured, or get hit while standing in your lawn. Exceptions to that might be if the uninsured car causing injury was one that is regularly used by you or a member of your household.
Claim disputes between the UIM policy-holder and the insurer typically require such disputes be resolved by arbitration, not lawsuits. Lawsuits may be filed only to get a court to determine whether the UIM coverage might be applicable to your claim if the carrier disputes that. Claim resolutions themselves are usually done by use of arbitrators picked by the parties.
Such arbitrators are empowered under Illinois law to issue witness subpoenas and to make fact findings at a hearing with witnesses, just as a court judge would. Such findings are binding on the parties and are only appealable in the courts if the arbitrators completely misapplied the law.
Which is not hard to do given how complicated the law has become.
Class dismissed. You can go back to your fantasy-COVID-19-football league now.
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September 20, 2020 at 09:00PM
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The Law Q&A | How uninsured-motorist auto insurance can help - Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette
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