Pennsylvania Injury Law Report : Accident Attorney Philadelphia: Personal Injury Attorney Philadelphia (PA), Injury Lawyer Philadelphia - Kreithen Baron & Carpey

What is a hit and run accident in Pennsylvania? If you have been unfortunate enough to have been involved in an accident like this, what can you do? Can you get compensated for your injuries and damages?

The answer is yes, if you have purchased uninsured motorist coverage.

To prove an uninsured motorist claim in a hit and run case, you have to prove that the driver that hit you was negligent, and that you sustained actual injuries. There is no requirement that there be actual physical contact between your car and the at fault driver’s car. You must however report your accident to the police with 30 days of the accident or sooner, and you must be able to prove that you made reasonable efforts to obtain the hit and run driver’s information, like his or her name, phone number, address, or tag number, if you can. Of course in some cases that is simply not possible. But, there may be witnesses at or near the scene that can help you or your personal injury attorney track down the at fault driver.

In this type of case, your own insurance company steps into the shoes of the hit and run driver. You make a claim to your own carrier, and they will hire a lawyer to defend the claim made against them.

Uninsured motorist coverage is not mandatory in Pennsylvania. It is an optional coverage. So, unfortunately, some people have no insurance uninsured motorist coverage whatsoever for hit and run accidents.

For more information on how to make sure you have the right coverage on your car, truck or motorcycle policy, take advantage of our offer to have Stuart Carpey review your policy at no cost to you.

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PennDOT doesn’t say much in terms of helping consumers decide how much car insurance coverage to purchase. That's a problem for consumers.

We’ve always recommending buying more than the minimal limits!

Every state has a minimum required amount of auto insurance. Depending on the state, the costs will vary. In Pennsylvania, the state required minimums for liability auto insurance are $15,000 of coverage for injury or death of a single person, $30,000 of coverage for injury or death of multiple people, and $5,000 of property insurance.

According to the PennDOT website, "you are in compliance" with the law if you have liability insurance in the following amounts:
• $15,000 for injury or death of one person in an accident
• $30,000 for injury or death of more than one person in an accident
• $5,000 for damage to property of another person

Simply put, you should purchase more than the minimum coverage required by law. You should buy as much as you can afford.  Some insurance companies, although surely not all,  do a better job  than PennDOT does of explaining the coverages you need. It's inexcusable that PennDOT's web site is so lacking in this regard, particularly since the Pennsylvania Insurance Department does is somewhat better job of explaining to consumers the various different types of coverage you can purchase when buying car insurance. The Pennsylvania Insurance Department web site even goes on to state "having the right insurance coverage may prevent you from suffering a large financial loss in the event of an automobile accident."  We couldn't agree more.

In other words, don't skimp on your car insurance coverage.  We would only hope that someone from PennDOT would look at the Insurance Department's web site. Changes to PennDOT's website are needed to give consumers something more than "buy the minimum legal insurance coverage." That's just bad advice.

Optional, yet highly recommended additions to the state minimum are full tort coverage, rather than limited tort, as well as uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage. This is separate and apart from liability coverage. For more information about these coverages, go to the Insurance Department's web site or order my book on the subject.

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Unlikely. But Jennifer Smith, whose mother, Linda Doyle, was killed last year by another driver who was distracted because he was talking on his cell phone and ran a red light in Oklahoma City is testing the theory. The reason she can’t win the case is because Sprint-Nextel, whose cell phone service the defendant driver was using at the time, owed no direct duty to Jennifer Smith’s mother. The driver of the other car, 20 year old Christopher Hill, owed a duty Mrs. Doyle, to operate his vehicle in a prudent and reasonable manner. We all owe that duty to each other when we are driving on the road. When that duty is breached, it gives rise to a claim for negligence. Without the duty, there is no negligence.

What’s really going on here is that the negligent driver didn’t carry enough liability coverage on his auto insurance policy,  or failed to carry any coverage. As such, when Jennifer Hill made a claim to Hill’s auto insurance carrier for the death caused by Hill (ie: a personal injury case on behalf of the estate of Linda Doyle), assuming he had some coverage, the carrier probably paid their minimal policy limits. Jennifer Smith’s next step was to make an uninsured motorist claim (UM) through her mother’s auto insurance policy or underinsured motorist claim (UIM). That policy either didn’t carry any UM or UIM coverage, or carried a minimal amount.

The lawyer on behalf of Mrs. Doyle's estate and on behalf of Jennifer Smith  is clearly looking for another source of funds from which to compensate Ms. Smith for the death of her mother. It is an otherwise viable approach, but one that will ultimately fail.

I preach to consumers that they must maximize their UM and UIM coverage. The whole idea of any insurance investment is to use it as a tool to protect yourself and your family. If Linda Doyle had carried sufficient amounts of UM and UIM  coverage, Jennifer Smith and her lawyer would not have had to make a tenuous claim against Sprint-Nextel.

We’re talking about personal responsibility here. Tort cases, (that is, negligence cases), are frequently targeted for discouraging lack of individual responsibility - the theory being that if the courthouse is open to all sorts of legal wrongs, the party suing can look to others for his injury before accepting responsibility for his own actions.

But in reality, the tort law system encourages personal responsibility for wrongs committed in the community. For instance, enforcing negligence claims against drivers using cell phones and being too distracted to operate a vehicle safely is by definition enforcing personal responsibility, on the defendant driver. So too is encouraging consumers to purchase sufficient amounts of insurance coverage, particularly UM and UIM benefits, so that they and their families are financially protected against the careless acts of negligent drivers.
 

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So how should you as a Pennsylvania driver protect yourself and your family? Buy as much uninsured motorist coverage (UM) as you can reasonably afford. It's cheap insurance. Your insurance agent won't advertise  what a good deal it is for you, because the premium money is comparatively less than for other types of coverage. In other words, your agent isn't making any money by selling you UM coverage.

But you need it and it's a cheap as well as valuable purchase. The economy has taken a toll on everyone. Dropping car insurance may seem like a good idea to someone who isn't bringing in a paycheck. Sorry, bad choice. Car insurance is just another part of the cost of owning a car. No different than the cost of gas or an oil change.

But what's a Pennsylvania consumer to do if injured in a car crash with an uninsured driver? Turn to your own insurance carrier in order to make a UM claim. Your insurance company steps into the shoes of the uninsured driver, and you are then able to present your personal injury claim to your own insurance company. Your company has the right to sue the uninsured driver for any money that is paid to you in UM benefits.

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