Chico, TX Personal Injury Law Firms & Lawyers

No. If the accident was not your fault you aren't liable. If you had insurance at the time of the accident you need to contact your insurance company and they will handle it for you.

Let me say I am very sorry to read about your husband's injuries. They sound very serious and should be treated that way. As far as compensation goes, the Under Insured Motorist policy might be all there is to collect unless you can establish the driver's father somehow new what his daughter was doing and should have stopped her. This would help if she is on his policy and lives with him. Otherwise she is an adult responsible for her own actions. There is the small possibility to recover from the vehicle owner if there are some assets. Your PIP /UIM coverage will only pay the medical up to the amount of the contract your policy states you have. They will not pay your bills for life. You will have to rely on your health insurance at that point.

I would require additional information on your situation. However, assuming it was a motor vehicle accident that injured your spine, then in 1989, the Washington State Supreme Court held that a 6 year contract-based statute of limitation applies to UIM claims, rather than a 3 year tort based statute of limitations. Thus, a three-year statute of limitation applies to claims filed to recover damages for personal injuries received in a motor vehicle accident. This may be found under RCW 4.16.080 (2). However, this may not be your situation. The six-year statute of limitations may apply if the person who hit you did not have insurance or is simply underinsured, and you have a policy which contains underinsured motorist protection. This would allow for a six-year statute of limitations. However, an insured must not confuse his or her UIM entitlement with any right that the insured may also have against their own insurance Co. as a third-party claimant. So let us say, for example, if an insured driver is injured while riding as a passenger in his or her own vehicle, and the collision was the fault of an uninsured or underinsured driver of the insured's vehicle, the three-year tort statute of limitations found under RCW 4.16.080 (2) will apply to the insured's third-party claim against his or her insurer. This is so because the person's status as a named insured does not change the applicable statute of limitations when that person files a third-party claim against his or her own insurer. In addition, one must bear in mind that, if you find yourself in a UIM situation, a close review of your policy may reveal that you are unable to file a lawsuit. Rather, there may be other hoops set up by your insurance company that you must jump through, prior to the filing in court. What you need to remember is if these hoops have not been jumped through by you, as you promised you would do when you purchased policy, then the insurance company can force you to do so and courts are helpless in this matter. Bottom line, a close review of your policy, is warranted in all cases. Washington State's legal system has time limits on which one may make a claim. There are many reasons for these temporal elements. For example, over time, evidence may be corrupted, disappear, witnesses memories fade, scenes for which collisions occurred change, and entities dispose of critical records. The best time to bring a lawsuit is while the aforementioned is not lost or corrupted and as close as possible to the alleged negligent behavior. Thus, it has been my experience as an ex-claims insurance adjuster working with defense counsel on litigation files, and now as a plaintiff's attorney; that insurance companies like to drag out the litigation process in order to advance their profit margins and causes because they know that overtime evidence may be corrupted, disappear, memories fade, scenes for which collisions occurred change and entities dispose of critical records which would allow the plaintiff to prove their case. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the injured party to swiftly bring about changes so that the process may begin and fully executed. Generally speaking, these limitations, or for the lack of a better term, time periods begin when a cause of action is deemed to have arisen, and in some situations when a plaintiff had reason to know of the harm or should have known of the harm rather than at the time of the original event. This distinction is important in cases in which an event which occurred earlier on has delayed ramifications.