Talk:Liability insurance
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I have completed the wikification of the page. If you don't think it does the job well enough, feel free to pitch in. -David91 08:09, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
[edit] concrete examples
This page is too abstract. would it be possible to add some concrete examples? For example, if one person has liability insurance and gets in an accident and damages another car, but his car also gets damaged, does the insurance pay only the other party or would they compensate the car damage to the owner of the liability insurance? Also, would it be possible for the insurance company to claim that the accident was not an accident, but a malicious attempt by the liability insurance holder and thus not pay for the damage caused?
[edit] US position
The addition of an element specific to the U.S. is most useful. Howe bbvn bv bn bver, I am a little unclear why the public policy is to make the existence of liability insurance inadmissible. If I was a prospective litigant, it would change my view on whether to sue if I knew that the defendant had no insurance. Obviously, a successful judgment as to liability is worthless if the defendant has inadequate private funds out of why to pay damages. The U.S. public policy would seem to operate as a deterrent to litigation against private citizens or small companies or large companies whose solvency is doubted because the plaintiff may be suing a "man of straw". And lawyers may not recover their costs!!! I'm probably being very stupid in not seeing the immediately obvious answer. Could you hep me out please. -David91 05:26, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)
(If you're still reading this page) I think your problem may be the definition of "admissible." Certainly, a plaintiff may discover whether or not their defendant has insurance (and may probably use judicially ordered discovery to do so once a lawsuit has been instituted). The issue is that a litigant may not admit evidence of insurance at trial as evidence that the defendant is guilty, i.e. may not say "Look, jury, the defendant doctor has medical malpractice insurance-- clearly, he's a crummy doctor if he's going to pay an insurance company to handle all the claims that are going to be brought against him." I've added a link in the article to the relevant section of the evidence law article. QuixoticKate 16:13, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
What's more, a jury must often determine the amount of damages that the defendant owes to the plaintiff. Thinking "oh well, he's got insurance" may cause a jury to drive the monetary award up - beyond what one would deem appropriate, but for the knowledge of the insurance company's "deep pockets" ... Omegadrone 00:47, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
