The short answer is, any number of people or their insurance companies may be on the hook for your personal injury claim. What really comes down to is the question of who is responsible for your damages. The answer to this question is sometimes straightforward and other times, more complicated. An auto accident lawyer community members have available to them will be qualified to answer this question much more thoroughly but for a brief answer, here’s why:
Consider first that car accidents do not typically happen in a vacuum where one single factor is the sole reason for someone else’s crash and injuries. This only happens with crash test dummies on closed courses with lots of trained personnel. In the real world out on the road, there are many different things that can come into play to cause a person’s injuries in a crash.
We’ll start, of course, with the most obvious cause of a person’s injuries – the other driver or drivers who hit the person’s car. In chain fender benders this is fairly easy to figure out since everyone pancakes into the next car. In more complicated multi-car accidents, especially where there are difficult driving conditions such as fog or a blizzard, this question can actually become very difficult to answer. The good news is that with multi-car accidents, they are more likely to have a police officer or state trooper dispatched to document the situation and determine with accident reconstruction or at least witness testimony what really happened.
Once the police have figured out who caused damage to who, the insurance companies can begin to work through the negotiating of damages and payments, etc. This process becomes more difficult, however, if anyone of the drivers is uninsured or underinsured. In this case, the ball goes back to the court of the person who’s car was damaged by the other driver. This is because the lack of insurance usually means that the person is indigent or at least does not have a lot of assets that can be used to pay a judgment. Even the underinsured driver can have relatively few assets or means to pay a judgment.
In this situation, the burden of paying the personal injury claim can actually boomerang back to the person who was injured or whose car was damaged. If this person has uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage – essentially extra insurance that you purchase to guard against not being able to get a judgment from someone who has no insurance – then, this insurance will cover your damages. Of course, you have paid for this insurance so it can seem rather unfair, but it is still not as much as you would have to pay for these damages out of pocket.
It is always possible, however, that there is a third party that is partially liable for the accident as well who you can turn to for damages. If the road was built improperly causing the accident in the first place, everyone can then turn around and sue the state’s Department of Transportation and the company that built the road.
No matter what, however, the first step to answering this question is to have a personal injury attorney review your case and take a long look at who is potentially liable.