Injured? Never Just Assume There’s Not Enough Insurance

Many people get into an automobile accident, and later find out that the other driver doesn’t have enough insurance to pay for all their injuries and vehicle  damage.

But you should never just assume that you’re out of luck. You should always talk to a lawyer who can investigate the situation, because it may turn out that there’s more insurance coverage than you initially thought.

In one recent case, a driver in Florida caused an accident and it appeared there wasn’t enough insurance to cover all the injuries that resulted to him and to the other driver.  But an investigation revealed that the driver had been volunteering that day for a non-profit youth group on a local cleanup project. The volunteer had planned to photograph the end result, but realized he had left his camera at home. He went back to get it, took the pictures, and headed home once again, which is when the accident occurred.

It turned out that the youth group had purchased insurance to cover volunteers – so the accident was actually covered by the policy that the group had purchased for just this sort of situation.

Initially, the insurance company refused to pay. It said that while the man had been a registered volunteer with the organization for decades, he wasn’t acting as a volunteer at the time of the accident because he was on his way home after the event.  But a Florida appeals court decided that the man might have
still been participating in the larger clean-up activity, because he would have developed the film and provided it to the organization once he got home – if not for the accident.

Lipschutz & Friedman