Treating on Another Person’s Policy - Michles & Booth, P.A. Blog

Video Transcript

Good morning. I’m Marcus Michles and welcome to this week’s edition of our video blog.

I’m a personal injury lawyer here at Michles & Booth. That’s pretty much all we do. We represent folks who have been hurt in accidents be it workers comp, social security disability, car accidents that kind of thing.

By now, if you’ve been on our website or if you’ve been in a personal injury claim before, you may understand a little bit about your personal injury protection, what we call PIP. Sometimes its called no-fault. Sometimes people even wrongly call it full coverage. And you understand the basics of PIP. It pays for eighty percent of your medical bills and sixty percent of lost wages up to a total of $10,000.

Being covered by PIP when you don’t have car insurance.

That’s the basics, but now let’s get into the sort of the secondary level. Let’s get into the little deeper understanding of PIP. You might not know it, but if you don’t have a car, and you don’t have a car obviously that has any insurance, well you don’t have PIP. You know that, but what you may not know is that you may be entitled to other people’s personal injury protection.

For example, let’s say you’re a passenger in an automobile, and that automobile runs the red light or somebody runs a red light and hits them. If you don’t have insurance but you’re in a car that does have insurance, you’re entitled to get your medical bills paid for by virtue of that vehicle’s PIP, and that may be true regardless of who was at fault.

So if your friend is giving you a ride, if there’s an accident, you don’t have any PIP, you don’t have a car that has any insurance, you’re entitled to pick coverage under the vehicle that you were in. You might even be entitled to PIP coverage from the vehicle that you were not in under certain circumstances.

For example, if you’re a pedestrian or if you’re on a bicycle, and you get hit by someone else, and you don’t have any car insurance, and you don’t have any PIP, you’re entitled to make a claim against the at-fault parties’ car insurance, their PIP, and get your bills paid just as if that policy was your own.

Possible complications…

Now here’s where it gets a little tricky sometimes. Sometimes it’s your friend that’s driving you, and sometimes your friend’s insurance and a lot of times people don’t want you making a claim on their coverage. It’s often times necessary to get a lawyer involved, not to force anybody to do anything, but to explain the way it works.

Your friend doesn’t want their insurance rates to go up, because you were hurt or you needed medical care while you were in their car. That’s understandable, but the reality is that the insurance industry has tremendous resources in terms of figuring out when the accident happened and who they happened with, and your friend’s insurance company is going to know that there was an accident. They’re going to know that there was a claim, and the insurance rates are going to be affected regardless of whether or not you make a claim for that PIP.

Review

Alright…so let’s review. You know that PIP covers 80% of medical bills if you’ve got your own coverage, but keep in mind that if you don’t have any coverage, you don’t have a car…Now this doesn’t apply if you have a car but you let your insurance lapse, but if you don’t have a car and you don’t have PIP, but you’re riding in a car that does, you’re entitled to the coverage that’s on that car. Ok?

Now if you got a question about that, give me a call, and need clarification, give us a call. We’ll be happy to talk to you at no charge…always…that’s the case. We don’t ever get paid if we don’t collect money for you, but if you want to see our Frequently Asked Questions section, if you want to contribute, give me a call. Otherwise take a look at this selection that we’ve got on michlesbooth.com/blog. Until next time, I’m Marcus Michles on behalf of the law firm of Michles & Booth. Be careful out there!