Open letter to Senator Beall regarding personal injury insurance reform

Dear Senator Beall,

I have recently become aware of a significant gap in our laws regarding auto insurance and personal injury matters.

I handled two cases with the same unfortunate result because of this gap. In the first, a family of four was injured in an auto accident caused by a tire blow-out on another vehicle. In the second, an individual was injured in an auto accident caused by a driver who had a stroke while behind the wheel.

In each case, the driver was insured and the victim also had uninsured motorist coverage. In each case, no compensation was available to the victim under either policy because:

1. The driver was not “negligent” in causing the accident, therefore his insurance didn’t have to pay.
2. There was no other “at fault” party without insurance, therefore the uninsured motorist coverage didn’t have to pay.

In each case, the victims were entirely innocent of wrongdoing, did the right thing by having all available insurance coverage, but have had their lives altered for the worse because both insurance companies are lucky enough to be off the hook.

This cannot be a just result, and it requires legislation to fix. Such legislation could work in one of two ways: Either we could require California insurance companies to offer supplemental coverage (similar in nature to UIM coverage) that covers situations in which no party is deemed to be at fault, or we could require that already available UIM coverage pay in this type of event. Your constituents should be able to use their insurance to protect themselves from this type of unforeseen occurrence. Both I and the opposing attorney view the two cases I recited to you as an unfair tragedy.

Please let me know if this is something you are interested in trying to fix in the next session.

Best Regards,

Louis S. Abronson
Abronson Law Offices