My client suffered serious injury as the result of an Illinois motorcycle accident outside of the Belleville Illinois area in St Clair County, Illinois. She was the passenger on the back of a motorcycle when the driver lost control of the bike and the next thing she knows is that she wakes up in the hospital several days later.
After months of investigation, we discovered that the facts of the case were that my Illinois personal injury client was invited to a party where she knew only a few people, the driver of the bike borrowed the motorcycle from the owner who was hosting the party, she rode along and the motorcycle driver lost control, crashed the motorcycle and knocked her out. The owner or the driver took her to a hospital several hours away as the driver of the motorcycle or the owner had a relative that worked at the hospital. This relative made sure the cops were not called and that the people who dropped the injured victim off were not identified or reported. This falls under the category of an Illinois uninsured motorist claim or lawsuit as the driver or operator of the motor vehicle is unidentified.
Being an Illinois uninsured motorist claim my client must make a claim through her insurance for uninsured motorist coverage. In many states Uninsured motorist coverage is implied as at least to match the minimum liability coverage allowed by law even if the policy holder does not have a specific uninsured motorist coverage policy. Almost every insurance policy has the minimum uninsured motorist coverage stated as part of the coverage.
As stated in previous entries on this blog, uninsured motorist coverage follows the person not the vehicle. In this particular case, my client was insured by a Missouri insurance policy with Shelter insurance. Shelter insurance now includes an exclusionary clause under its uninsured motorist coverage section; this clause states that uninsured motorist coverage only applies to personal injury resulting from an automobile accident. Now this sounds harmless on its face, however, Shelter Insurance takes it a step further to define an automobile as a motorized vehicle with four or more wheels. Thus, they are denying my client uninsured motorist claim because it occurred as a result of an uninsured motorcyclist as opposed to a driver of a car or truck.
One of the purposes of having uninsured motorist coverage is to cover an insured in case they are struck by a phantom vehicle or by a vehicle or driver that has no insurance. That way there is still some redress despite the at fault driver having no insurance or money to cover the personal injury loss. In this case, Shelter is trying to get around well settled public policy decisions by the court by defining an automobile to mean four or more wheels. So under a previous example of a pedestrian getting hit by a car and the driver fleeing with no one able to get any identifying information, clearly that would be covered by the pedestrian's uninsured motorist coverage. Now change one fact, instead of a car, the pedestrian is struck by a motorcycle that flees and is unidentified. Now the pedestrian is left with zero recourse according to Shelter even though they were responsible and had uninsured motorist coverage.
This is an issue that will go to the courts as it appears it has not been preciously decided and I will update this blog regarding important Illinois uninsured motorist motorcycle accident claim issues as this and other cases I am handling progress.
