« back to articles

LIMITS ON PERSONAL INJURIES LAW SUITS HAVE PRODUCED NO INSURANCE BARGAINS

by Andrew S. Prince

The lawsuit or verbal threshold statute which the legislature adopted in this state to limit automobile lawsuits should be repealed because this particular law has clearly failed to trigger a drop in insurance prices as promised. We would like for one person to show us where they have purchased cheaper auto insurance coverage than they had before the threshold statute went into effect. If anything, insurance premiums are the same or higher then before.

All that has truly happened in our state is a restriction on consumers' rights. This restriction on your ability to sue for personal injury has had terrible consequences for many innocent people. Where has the limit on lawsuits for injuries improved affordability or availability of liability insurance coverage for your automobiles? We would like to see whether there is any significant difference between those states which have little or no restrictions on your ability to sue as compared to those states, such as ours, which have severe restrictions on victims' rights. We are willing to bet that there is little if any difference in the insurance premiums between our state and other states that do not restrict consumers' rights to sue for personal injury.

The time has come for us to stand together. Although there are fraudulent cases, bad lawyers and people who truly should not sue because they are not injured, we are hurting more innocent people than fraudulent people. Therefore, unless there is some real legitimate insurance savings, we need to point our finger at the real culprit--the INSURANCE INDUSTRY. The insurance industry is so powerful that they have been able to change legislation to restrict consumers' rights to sue for injuries and still continue to make record profits. We will be interested in hearing your thoughts or comments.