One or more persons must make a mistake, in order to cause a collision. How can an insurance company determine who should be held liable for that accidental occurrence?

Circumstances studied by the insurance company

• The position of the involved vehicles
• The location of damage on the involved vehicles.
• Each of the drivers offers a story, but not all the stories have the same information.

What role does the police report play in determining who should be held liable?

No insurance company is required to follow the implications contained in a police report. Insurers are always looking for evidence that points to shared fault, an instance where both parties contributed to occurrence of the accident. Still, every insurer appreciates the fact that the details reported by the police should be viewed as a significant factor.

What role does a lawsuit play in determining who should be held liable?

Unless the hit driver files a lawsuit, the insurance company determines who should be named as responsible for a given collision. That means that the insurance company has the right to claim that a given driver was partly responsible for a certain amount of the damage. Before creation of uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, an insurance company might use that right to reduce the amount of money that it owed to a policy holder. Take, for instance, what happened to one policy holder that got rear-ended on a September night.

This took place at a time when no one had given thought to offering uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage. The driver that hit the owner of a station wagon in the rear was drunk and uninsured. The force of the impact pushed the wagon into the automobile in front of it.

The insurance company contended that their policy holder damaged the automobile. Hence, it reduced the amount of money that it used to compensate him for the damage to his station wagon. How does that story relate to lawsuits? The driver realized that he could file a lawsuit, in order to fight the insurer’s allegation. Still, the owner of the station wagon chose not to follow that route. The driver’s decision allowed the insurance company to proceed with its plan to claim that their policy holder had contributed to some of the damage.

The hidden power of lawsuits

By consulting with a Personal Injury Lawyer in Mississauga, the driver that was involved in a car accident might learn more than how to fight an insurer’s allegation. The same driver might discover that he or she has a stronger and larger claim. For instance, it could be that one of the passengers has started to display the symptoms that are associated with a decidedly serious injury.