Articles Posted in Car, Truck & Motorcycle Accidents

Personal Injury Protection (PIP) insurance is mandatory in Florida for owners of operational motor vehicles and usually provides coverage up to $10,000 for medical benefits and lost wages. In many instances, the coverage will extend to other individuals besides just the owner of the vehicle.

After choosing a carrier, the vehicle owner must complete an insurance application to obtain the coverage. Most applications require that all drivers residing in a household be listed. The purpose of this requirement is for the insurance company to be able to properly assess its risk to determine the appropriate premium (i.e., cost of the policy).

Section 627.409 Florida Statutes gives the insurer the right to deny coverage if a misrepresentation in the insurance application is: (1) fraudulent; (2) material to the risk being assumed; or (3) the insurer in good faith either would not have issued the policy or would have done so only on different terms had the insurer known the facts.

Most people would agree that an insurance company should be allowed to deny coverage to an undisclosed driver injured in an accident while driving the covered vehicle. Quite simply, the carrier should not be required to provide coverage to someone on whose behalf an insurance premium was not paid. A more problematic scenario involves the question of coverage for a listed driver injured in an accident while driving the covered vehicle, where the carrier learns that an unlisted listed driver also resides in the household. Regretably, the trend in Florida seems to be towards allowing carriers to deny coverage to the disclosed driver. See United Auto. Ins. v. Salgado , No. 3D07-461 (Fla. App. 8/5/2009) (Fla. App., 2009).
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Florida personal injury lawyers face the difficult task of convincing insurance adjusters, opposing lawyers, judges and juries that occupants in vehicles suffering only minor property damage from crashes have sustained significant injuries. Common sense and logic seem to be working against Plaintiffs’ lawyers – ‘how can there be serious personal injuries without significant property damage?’ The answer is that there is more to the dynamics of a crash than meets the eye.

Vehicle damage is just one factor of many in determining impact speed. Many parameters such as vehicle masses, impact angles, the pre-impact velocity of both vehicles, crush resistance, metallurgical fatigue, etc., effect how the bumpers behave during an impact. One example of the variability is that older vehicles generally have stronger bumpers and can absorb greater impacts while showing less damage than newer cars where style dominates over function.

This is a complex subject that will touched on in greater detail in later blogs.

Until recently, every owner of a motor vehicle in Florida was responsible for damages caused by crashes involving the negligent operation of their/its vehicles by permissive users. The concept behind the legal principle is that motor vehicles are dangerous instrumentalities to be used with great care and caution, and that by holding the owner accountable careless vehicle lending/leasing practices will be minimized.

With one glaring exception, this law remains in effect in Florida today. The major exception applies to car rental companies.

In 2005, the United States Congress, at the urging of the Bush Administration, passed a legislative measure known as the Graves Amendment. The law preempts the laws of the individual states, including Florida, over the responsibility of car rental companies for accidents involving vehicles owned by them. Unlike Florida law, the federal law appears to have limited, if not altogether eliminated, the legal responsibility of rental companies for damages caused by their vehicles.