In October, the Colorado Court of Appeals decided yet another case dealing with uninsured/underinsured motorist (UI/UMI) insurance, reminding me (again) of the importance of this coverage.
In this case, a woman named Alicia Kretzer was seriously injured in a traffic accident. The at-fault driver’s liability insurance covered only a small portion of her damages. Before the accident, Kretzer had been excluded from her husband’s auto insurance policy issued by Farmers Insurance because of “underwriting” issues — meaning, presumably, a bad driving record, bad credit or something else that caused Farmers to decline to insure her.
Despite the exclusion, after her accident, Kretzer filed a can’t-hurt-to-try claim for UI/UMI coverage under her husband’s policy. Farmers denied her claim and initiated a “declaratory judgment” action — a lawsuit brought by an insurance…
