No Threshold
NO THRESHOLD, Lawsuit Threshold, Verbal Threshold, Limitation on Lawsuit Option – What is this?
You have an important decision to make regarding the Right to Sue. If you go against our advice and select the cheap “verbal threshold”, this limitation will apply to your claims and your family member’s claims even if the defendant admitted fault, was driving 100 mph over the speed limit, totaled your vehicle, was drunk and high, and caused the accident because they dropped their crack pipe – none of these things matter if you select this “limitation on lawsuit option”.
If your injuries, or your family member’s injuries, (even if the injuries are permanent!) don’t satisfy specific criteria, then the case may be dismissed! The defendant pays nothing, and you’re left with uncompensated losses.
The choice you make affects how much your insurance will cost and what claims will be paid in the event of an accident. The choice you make regarding your right to sue another driver applies to you, your spouse, children and other relatives living with you who are not covered under another automobile insurance policy.
Unlimited Right To Sue (recommended) – Under the No Limitation on Lawsuit Option, you retain the right to sue the person who caused an auto accident for pain and suffering for any injury.
Limited Right to Sue (terrible choice – you have no way of knowing what damage claims you are potentially waiving for you and your family) – By choosing the Limitation on Lawsuit Option, you agree not to sue the person who caused an auto accident for your pain and suffering unless you sustain one of the permanent injuries listed below:
- Loss of body part
- Significant disfigurement or significant scarring
- A displaced fracture – Which means a broken bone with the two ends separated at the break – so you or your family member could break every bone in their body, even the skull, and if the fracture/break is not displaced then the case will be dismissed!
- Loss of a fetus
- Permanent injury (Any injury shall be considered permanent when the body part or organ, or both, has not healed to function normally and will not heal to function normally with further medical treatment.) This is not as simple as this seems. In almost every single case the bad guy’s insurance company’s lawyer will hire a Board-Certified, American medical school-trained orthopedist who speaks well, to write a report and testify to contradict the opinions of your doctors, or your family member’s doctors. Most of the insurance companies’ doctors make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in this insurance business, some make millions.
Just in case we haven’t made our point regarding how bad a decision the limitation on lawsuit option/verbal threshold is, here are some more scenarios where the this selection would bar the following claims, again using use the drunken crack-head defendant as the offending driver:
- The injury you or your spouse or child sustained a collapsed lung, ruptured spleen, and cracked ribs. The collapsed lung and ruptured spleen didn’t kill you and they healed, and the broken ribs were not separated/displaced fractures – case dismissed!
- You or your spouse or child was knocked unconscious and in a coma for a month, and sustained a fractured skull. There is no permanent brain injury, and the fractured/broken skull was not a separated fracture – case dismissed!
- You, your spouse or children are disabled for a year, in active treatment for two years, and all sustain permanent injuries but the injuries are the type that don’t show on a diagnostic test or other objective form of evidence – case dismissed!
The point is that you don’t know what kind of accident you, your spouse or resident family members may sustain in a accident in advance of it happening, so why would you potentially give immunity to the careless driver who may change your life? It’s not worth the few hundred dollars you save in getting the verbal or lawsuit threshold – make sure you get “no threshold” for you and your family.
WARNING:
Insurance companies or their producers or representatives shall not be held liable for your choice of lawsuit option (Limited Right to Sue or Unlimited Right to Sue) or for your choices regarding amounts and types of coverage. You cannot sue an insurance company or its producers or representatives if the Limited Right to Sue option is imposed by law because no choice was made on the coverage selection form. Insurers and their producers or representatives can lose this limitation on liability for failing to act in accordance with the law.
See N.J.S.A. 17:28-1.9 for more information.
Garruto & Calabria, Attorneys At Law
609 Franklin Avenue, Nutley, NJ 07110
Phone: 973-661-4455
Fax: 973-661-2555
EMAIL US
