Legal Question in Personal Injury in California

Re: auto injury

Dave: You're a victim of Prop 213, passed by the voters in 1996. Without insurance, you can collect medical bills, wage loss and property damage. If you have health insurance, use it. There is an exception if the other driver was found guilty of drunk driving. It doesn't matter how many cops witnessed the accident.

Re: auto injury

Uninsured drivers may not collect damages for pain and suffering. If the other driver is at fault, you can collect for your property damage, medical bills and certain other losses which resulted from the accident.

Your disbelief is your problem and you need to deal with it. The reason you are required to have liability insurance isn't to protect yourself but rather to protect the rest of us from potentially ruinous bills for medical care and property damage if you cause an accident. By not paying for insurance, you chose to enrich yourself by increasing the financial risk to others.

(In many ways your actions are like those of people who have too much to drink and then decide to drive home instead of paying for a cab. They place others at risk in order to save a few bucks, and there is no reason the law should sympathize with them if their gamble turns out badly.)

In order to encourage drivers to take responsibility for the harm they might cause -- and, of course, to obey the law -- the state decided to create an incentive for people to carry liability insurance. That incentive is the risk of being unable to sue for pain and suffering in circumstances like those in which you now find yourself.

Your question asks what alternatives you have, and the answer is that there are none. You will have to manage without recovering damages for your pain and suffering.

[By the way, I don't mean to sound callous about what you are going through. It sounds like you are in enormous pain and I do sympathize with you. Of course, you would be in exactly the same amount of pain if you had been insured, so the only question here is whether you can properly be denied recovery for your suffering as a consequence of being uninsured. The answer is yes, and it seems like a perfectly reasonable answer to me.]

Re: auto injury

Unfortunately the law, as unfair as it is, precludes you from recovering damages for your pain, as a punishment for not having insurance.

Re: auto injury

Simple, bring a claim against the other driver -- sue if you have to. If he or the registered owner has insurance, you will be able to recover. IF they have no insurance or assets, you will have a problem collecting anything. Contact me if you would like to have help in getting fair recovery.

Re: auto injury

Sounds like a good case. You may contact me. See my credentials, I'm a winner.