Originally from:
Automobile Insurance Subrogation: In All 50 States - Hardcover
Automobile Insurance Subrogation: In All 50 States - Electronic
Preview Page
CHAPTER 2
AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE
§ 2.01 Generally
Automobile insurance is insurance purchased for cars, trucks, and
other motor vehicles. It provides insurance and protection against
other losses to or damages incurred by the insured due to losses,
accidents and mishaps related to the ownership of a motor vehicle.
Auto insurance also protects and indemnifies against any liability
that the insured could be exposed to as a result of owning or
operating the insured vehicle.
Most states require automobile insurance protecting others against
property damage and personal injury as a result of accidents
involving the insured vehicle. Each state has different means of
enforcing these mandatory insurance requirements, with varying
degrees of success. Despite a wide variety of approaches to doing so,
there are still a large number of vehicle operators who refuse to or
cannot afford to obtain automobile insurance, creating an uninsured
community against which the remainder of properly-insured
Americans must pay to protect themselves. The minimum required by
law is usually just third-party liability insurance adequate to protect
third parties against the financial consequences of loss, damage or
injury caused by the negligent operation of the insured vehicle by the
insured or somebody operating the vehicle with his permission.
Insurance limits are discussed later in this book for each state.
Understanding how these limits are expressed is important in
understanding how to effectively subrogate for auto claim payments.
One type of auto insurance limits is known as "combined single
limits," which combines property damage, liability coverage, and
bodily injury coverage under a single combined limit.
Another type of policy limits is called "split limits." Split limits
split the various types of auto coverage into property damage
coverage and bodily injury coverage. Bodily injury liability coverage
is further broken down into a maximum payment per person and a
maximum payment per accident. The limits are often expressed
separated by slashes in the following form: "bodily injury per
person/bodily injury per accident/property damage. This could be
$15,000 for injury/death to one person, $30,000 for injury/death to
more than one person, and $5,000 for damage to property. These
limits can also be represented as "15/30/5."
Gary Wickert is an insurance trial lawyer and is regarded as one of the world's leading experts on insurance subrogation. He is also the author of several subrogation books and legal treatises and is a national and international speaker and lecturer on subrogation and motivational topics. After 15 years as the youngest managing partner in the history of the 30-lawyer Houston law firm of Hughes, Watters & Askanase, L.L.P., Mr. Wickert returned to his native Wisconsin in 1998 and co-founded the subrogation firm of Matthiesen, Wickert & Lehrer, S.C. He oversees a National Recovery Program which includes a network of nearly 285 contracted subrogation law firms in all 50 states, Mexico, Canada and the United Kingdom and boasts recoveries of more than $500 million in recoveries and credits for more than 200 insurance companies. Licensed in both Texas and Wisconsin, Mr. Wickert is double board-certified in both personal injury law and civil trial law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. He is also certified as a Civil Trial Advocate by the National Board of Trial Advocacy, for whom he has both written and graded the product liability questions contained on the NBTA national certification exam taken by trial lawyers around the country. For 25 years, Mr. Wickert has served as an expert witness and insurance consultant on subrogation and insurance related issues and has been consulted by insurance carriers, lawyers, and legislative bodies from several states. He is a licensed arbitrator and has attended more than 750 mediations in more than 30 different states. He has represented subrogated insurance carriers in every state, and has been admitted pro hac vice in 17 states. Gary Wickert has worked with the Texas Legislative Oversight Committee in rewriting their workers' compensation subrogation statutes, has served on the Board of the National Association of Subrogation Professionals, and has been cited as an authority on workers' compensation subrogation by several appellate courts, including the Texas Court of Appeals. He is one of only a few lawyers to have ever represented a subrogated carrier before the United States Supreme Court, and was named as one of Law & Politics magazine's "Super Lawyers" for 2005, 2006, and 2007.
