EP08 S03: What Every Car Accident Claimant Should Know About Full Coverage!

Learn all about FULL COVERAGE: Does it even exist? Or is it just a MYTH?

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Full Transcript:

Welcome to Trial Stories an informative discussion of civil justice with a focus on the human story. I’m your host. Arkady Frekhtman a New York City trial lawyer passionate about helping serious injury victims and their families.  And today, I wanted to talk about full coverage.

A lot of the time I deal with clients or prospective clients, and when we chat on the phone, people say, “Oh, don’t worry, I have full coverage.” But what is full coverage? In reality, as an attorney who’s been practicing law since 1999, more than 20 years now, do you think full coverage is a thing? Do you think it really exists? The answer, surprisingly, is no. There’s no such thing as full coverage. I don’t know where this term came from. I don’t know if it’s one of those urban dictionary things that people just came up with, or it’s an insurance company media ploy to try to get people to believe they have something that they don’t have. But in reality, in brutal honest reality, the raw truth is there’s no such thing as full coverage. The only kind of coverage you could have insurance-wise is you could have bodily injury coverage, and you could have no-fault coverage, which is PIP or personal injury protection.

So, for example, you’re driving a car and you’re stopped at a red light, and you get hit in the rear, the no-fault coverage is from your own automobile policy. Let’s say you have Allstate or Geico, they will pay for all your medical care up to $50,000. That’s the way it works in New York. And then, the car that hit you in the rear, you could sue them and they have bodily injury coverage. Some people could have 25,000, which is the minimum. Some people might have 100,000. Some people might have a million, or they’re going to have 250, a quarter-million with a 1 million excess policy. But what is full coverage? There’s no such thing as full coverage.

Now, you could have property damage collision coverage on your vehicle. That means that you get hit in the rear, and you don’t care about the other guy, you have a collision. So, you go through your own insurance and they fix your car. And then they, the insurance company, will get their money back from the car that hit you. Now, if you don’t have a collision what happens is you then have to sue the car that hates you. And that insurance company will pay for your property damage since they’re at fault. If you don’t have a collision at you’re at fault, or it’s 50/50, they’re going to give you nothing if you’re at fault. Or if it’s 50/50 they’re going to give you 50% of the property damage. If you have rental car coverage that means you can go and rent a car, and the insurance company will pay for your rental car. If you don’t have rental car coverage, you won’t get that.

But those are all the different coverages. And you have to be careful when you’re signing up and you’re agreeing to pay a premium every month, or every six months you’re paying that premium to get the insurance. So, you have to look at all the endorsements and speak to your broker and make sure you have that. But those are all the different coverages. The main coverages are no-fault, which is like health insurance allowing you to get medical care. It also pays for your lost wages. It pays for trips to, and from the doctor, out-of-pocket reimbursement. If you break your glasses, like you crushed them in an accident, they’ll reimburse you for that. Things like that.

And then, bodily injury, that’s the main coverage, that’s when you sue the car that hit you, the car that it’s at is at fault. And you’re trying to get compensation, full justice, financial compensation for all your pain and suffering, your lost wages, economic damages, non-economic damages, everything. That’s the bodily injury.

But this concept of full coverage, I don’t know why people keep talking about it, but it doesn’t exist. It’s a myth. So, I just wanted to educate you, so you could be informed and know about the reality.

Thank you so much, everyone have a great day. If you have any questions, drop us a comment, we’d be happy to answer. And have a great day. Bye-bye.

 

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