Lawrence Brownstein Personal Injury Law Blog on Lawyers.com

About the author: Lawrence Brownstein is an attorney with 20 years experience in Civil Litigation and Trial Law, specializing in the prosecution and defense of claims involving serious personal injury and wrongful death from automobile accidents, motorcycle accidents, truck accidents, medical malpractice, defective products, slip and fall accidents. He has literally handled hundreds of cases involving brain injury; neck and back injuries; closed head injuries; injury to the knees, shoulders, elbows and joints; spinal chord injuries; herniated discs; bulging discs; neck and back surgery; orthopaedic and neurological injuries; and fractures.  Mr. Brownstein has handled hundreds of medical negligence claims involving emergency room medicine; radiology, mis-diagnosis; radiology; oncology; orthopaedics; vascular surgery; general surgery; neurology; neuro-surgery; internal medicine. Lawrence Brownstein is the founding member of the Law Firm of Lawrence E. Brownstein, P.A. which is located in West Palm Beach and the firm handles serious personal injury and wrongful cases throughout South Florida.

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE COVERAGES IN FLORIDA

            Many times I am called to the hospital to meet with a potential client, or have a potential client contact me who has been injured in a motor vehicle accident. One of the first questions I ask is what type of automobile insurance the client has. Invariably, the response is, “I have full coverage”.  Whenever someone says that to me, I know I am working with someone who really does not know what types or how much insurance coverage they have. This is an important issue, however, because each automobile insurance policy has different coverages within the policy and each coverage only applies to specific things and cannot be used for other things. For instance, the coverage for property damage cannot be used to pay for your medical bills if you are injured in a motor vehicle accident. The coverage that pays your medical bills is called either Personal Injury Protection (PIP) or “medpay” coverage. Some policies have Personal Injury Protection and medpay, and some may not. If you do not have that type of coverage, then you will have to pay your medical bills from some other source. Personal Injury Protection and medpay coverage cannot be used to cover you if a claim is made against you by another person for their injuries if you were at fault. This is why it is so important to understand what the different coverages are and what protection they do and do not provide.

            Bodily injury liability coverage (BIL) is the type of coverage used to pay someone who makes a claim against you if they are hurt in the accident and you were the one who was negligent in causing the auto accident.  Some automobile insurance policies have that type of coverage and others do not. If you want that type of coverage, you will have to purchase it, just like any other coverage in the policy. If you do not have that type of coverage, and you injure someone in an auto accident, then the other types of coverages in your policy, such as personal injury protection, medpay or property damage cannot be used to pay the claim made by the person(s) who was injured due to your negligence. In that situation, you would have no insurance to protect you, and the injured party could proceed against whatever assets you may have to obtain compensation. If you have the bodily injury liability coverage, then the limits of that bodily injury liability coverage can be used to pay the claim to protect your assets. Like other coverages, you can purchase this type of coverage as part of your policy in different “policy limits”. The policy would cover you only up to the policy limits. Personal Injury Protection and medpay coverages also have policy limits and the insurance company will not pay more than the policy limits on any particular coverage type.

            Uninsured Motorist coverage (UM) is that type of coverage which will compensate you if you are injured in an auto accident due to the negligence of another and they do not have bodily injury liability as part of the coverage on their auto insurance policy or if they have no automobile insurance at all. If you have no Uninsured Motorist coverage on your policy and if you are injured by someone who does not have bodily injury liability, then you may have a very difficult time obtaining compensation for your injuries, etc. Generally, if someone has no or very little assets, they may not purchase bodily injury liability coverage because they would have no assets to protect. Uninsured Motorist coverage (UM)  must be purchased to have it as part of your automobile insurance policy. For Florida policies, you cannot obtain higher policy limits for uninsured motorist coverage than your coverage for bodily injury liability. If you do not have bodily injury liability, then you cannot purchase uninsured motorist coverage. However, you can purchase uninsured motorist coverage for policy limits less than the policy limits that you have for bodily injury liability.

            There are other types of coverage as well that a policy may or may not have including property damage, fire/theft, and comprehensive, all of which deal with situations if the vehicle, property owned by others or if the car is stolen or damaged by fire or flood. Each policy comes with a Declaration of Insurance sheet which itemizes the coverage of the policy and the policy limits. Therefore, you can just refer to your Declaration of Insurance Sheet to see what coverage your policy has and the limits of the coverage. You can also contact your insurance agent or your insurance company if you are unclear about anything concerning your policy.  Talk to them about the different types of coverage available, policy limits on each type of coverage and the cost for each type of coverage so you can make informed decisions about what policy and what coverage is for you. As always, good luck and safe driving!