Oregon Personal Injury Law Questions and Answers

Q: What is the best way to protect my family in a car crash?

A: Our motto is "Protecting You And Your Family." Both of the lawyers at Shulman DuBois are dads, and being a dad is the most important thing in both our lives. We are worried about protecting our families, and our job is to help you protect yours.

What can you do if someone else crashes into your car and causes you or your family $150,000.00 worth of injuries, but the person who hit you only has $25,000.00 worth of insurance?

Well, you could just take their $25,000.00 and be satisfied. Plenty of people do that. Plenty of lawyers do that. It's perhaps the most convenient option, but you'll still be stuck with $125,000.00 worth of injuries that nobody is paying for.

You could try to collect money directly from the person who hit you. If Bill Gates happened to crash into your car, this would probably be a good way to go. In general, though, people are very hard to get money out of, and trying to get money from somebody who doesn't have much tends to cost you more than it's worth. You end up paying lawyers or collection agencies a lot of money, without any guarantee that you'll be able to successfully collect from the person who hit you.

Your third option is by far the best: first collect the $25,000.00 from the insurance company of the person who hit you, and then collect the rest from your own Underinsured Motorist or "UIM" coverage.

UIM covers you in the case that you get hit by someone who is underinsured-someone whose insurance covers less than the damage they actually caused. In the example we've been working with, your UIM should pay the $125,000.00, since it is the amount by which the person who hit you was underinsured.

To get that $125,000.00 from your UIM, however, you have to have paid for that amount of coverage. If you've already been in a collision, it's too late to buy more UIM for that collision.

If, on the other hand, you have not already been in a crash, or if you have but want to be better prepared in case you get in another one, you should purchase more UIM coverage.

If you do not already have at least $250,000.00 of UIM, call your insurance agent right now. It is worth paying, and the coverage is cheaper than you might think. I personally pay less than $40.00 every six months to have UM/UIM coverage of $250,000 / $500,000 instead of the minimum of $25,000 / $50,000 (the first number is the maximum amount payable to each person, and the second is the maximum amount that the insurance company will ever have to pay for a given accident).

We write about UIM in more detail in our book, which we offer free to anyone injured in an Oregon auto accident. If you would like us to rush you a copy of Seven Common Mistakes That Can Wreck Your Oregon Car Crash Case, just click here.