A previous post on this blog talked about Ohio’s minimum insurance requirements that residents of Cincinnati must maintain if they want to drive on the area’s roads legally. These limits are not that high, and thus many people on the roads in Ohio may well be legal yet still not have enough insurance to pay compensation to injured people should they cause an accident.
Hopefully, residents of Ohio can take this information and realize the importance of purchasing underinsured motorist coverage. However, just because someone buys this coverage, it does not mean that they can just go and collect payment right after an accident.
There is a process involved in getting one’s own insurance company to pay underinsured benefits, even if it is clear that the person was injured by someone who does not have enough insurance coverage to pay for the injuries they caused. This process can involve some legal complexities, and it is, obviously, very important to take the right steps in the right order the first time.
Our law office has experience with helping our clients pursue underinsured benefits from their own insurance company assuming they purchased their coverage and assuming that there is simply not enough money available to pay them full compensation for all of their injuries otherwise. A lot of work is simply making sure we have our ducks in a row so that when the time comes, the company will pay benefits.
While we do not ever anticipate having a fight, we do not back down from one either should an insurance company wrongfully decline to pay underinsured benefits even though they have an obligation to do so.
