If you are currently a Florida resident, you can get drunk and wrap your car around a pole, then sue the carmaker – and Florida law precludes the defense from introducing evidence proving your intoxication at the time.
It is part of the reason why the state annually leads the country in auto accident lawsuits per capita, and why the lawyers at the D.C.-based American Tort Reform Association derisively refer to South Florida as a “judicial hellhole.”
Darren McKinney, Director of Communications at ATRA, says that while many states like Florida have some semblance of no-fault laws for auto insurance on the books, very few actually enforce them properly.
“In principle, the [no-fault law] concept is one we support,” McKinney says. The notion that human beings will make mistakes and when those mistakes injure others, the victims should be compensated justly and promptly. To the extent that no-fault law takes trial lawyers and their drive for profit out of the equation, and make it more administrative means that folks will be more quickly and fairly compensated, and our insurance premiums will be lower.”
There is a new law in Congress, however, that might help. It’s called the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act. (LARA). If passed and signed by President Obama, it will restore immediate monetary penalties for lawyers who bring frivolous lawsuits in federal court. Today, a 1993 law gives them a 21-day grace period to withdraw the lawsuit or reach a settlement if a judge deems it frivolous.
So what are these laws all about? No-fault car accident insurance [“no-fault laws”] requires individuals to purchase a certain amount of auto insurance coverage. In the event of an accident, the individual gets paid by his/her insurance company, rather than going though the “at-fault” accident victim’s insurance company. The trade-off is that one accident victim can’t sue another in civil court for “pain and suffering, “ and the insurance covers only medial expenses, not property damage. There is literally no judicial blame assigned for the accident, thus keeping the courts clear of plaintiffs who have suffered “clearly frivolous and de minimis injuries,” or ” small or minor injuries” as the Michigan Supreme Court recently wrote.
Steven M. Gursten, a personal injury attorney from Farmington Hills, Michigan, believes his state has the nation’s best no-fault accident laws.
“[The creation of the law in 1973] was premised upon a trade-off,” Gursten says, who co-founded the Michigan Auto Lawyers Blog as a way to educate Michigan residents on and law, as well as drum up additional business. “The trade-off was extremely generous first-party, no-fault benefits. It took away people’s ability to sue in tort [court] for their injuries, pain and suffering unless their injuries reached a certain level of severity. And if they didn’t meet that threshold, then they were literally barred from the courtroom.”
| STATE | First-party benefits (PIP) | Restrictions on lawsuits | Thresholds for lawsuits(Verbal/Monetary) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Florida | Yes | Yes | Verbal |
| Hawaii | Yes | Yes | Monetary |
| Kansas | Yes | Yes | Monetary |
| Kentucky | Yes | Yes/no (Policyholder can choose a no-fault policy or traditional tort liability) | Monetary |
| Massachusetts | Yes | Yes | Monetary |
| Michigan | Yes | Yes | Verbal |
| Minnesota | Yes | Yes | Monetary |
| New Jersey | Yes | Yes/no (Policyholder can choose a no-fault policy or traditional tort liability) | Verbal |
| New York | Yes | Yes | Verbal |
| North Dakota | Yes | Yes | Monetary |
| Pennsylvania | Yes | Yes/no (Policyholder can choose a no-fault policy or traditional tort liability) | Verbal |
| Puerto Rico | Yes | Yes | Monetary |
| Utah | Yes | Yes | Monetary |
Source: Insurance Information Institute
In Michigan, those first-party, no-fault benefits include lifetime medical coverage for all accident-related treatment, three years of lost wage and replacement services (e.g., chores), medical mileage (reimbursement driving to and from hospital), and attendant care.
The modern political climate has made no-fault laws a hot-button issue politically, with the basics of the law (e.g., injury threshold, burden of proof) occasionally being adjusted back-and-forth based on who wins in the previous election.
But Gursten advises not to wait until you are in a serious auto accident before finding out where your state stands.
