Florida Injury Attorney Blawg
Florida motor vehicle insurance policies offer a variety of coverages. PIP and Property Damage — Liability are mandatory coverages. Others, like bodily injury and uninsured/underinsured motorist (UM/UIM) are not.
An uninsured vehicle is one that does not maintain bodily injury coverage or, like a hit-and-run phantom vehicle, cannot be identified.
Interestingly, UM coverage may be available for injuries caused by road debris from an unknown source. However, the cases hold that the inference the debris came from another vehicle must be inescapable, or at least “outweigh all contrary inferences to such extent as to amount to a preponderance of all of the reasonable inferences that might be drawn from the same circumstances.” Voelker v. Combined Insurance Co. of America, 73 So.2d 403, 405 (Fla. 1954), citing King v. Weis-Patterson Lumber Co., 124 Fla. 272, 168 So. 858 (1936). See also Little v. Publix Supermarkets, Inc., 234 So.2d 132 (Fla. 4th DCA 1970).
In Allstate Insurance Company v. Bandiera, 512 So.2d 1082 (Fla. 4th DCA 1987), the appellate court denied coverage to a passenger injured by a cinder block from an unknown source. It felt that it was just as plausible that the cinder block was thrown at the car by pedestrians standing at the side of the road.