Wisconsin UIM Claim Denial Should Teach a Lesson in Personal Responsibility

There was an interesting article posted on Insurance Journal today about a Wisconsin family who had a UIM claim denied. You can read the article here. I’m not going to go into the details of the case, other than to say they had multiple personal auto policies, one of which had lapsed, the other had no UIM coverage. The father’s semi tractor was insured on a commercial auto policy and did have UIM coverage, so a claim was submitted on the commercial auto policy when the son was injured by an underinsured driver while he was riding in the family’s car (remember, that policy lapsed).

After multiple denials and appeals, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in favor of the insurance company, Hastings Mutual. This case is the perfect example of how NOT to insure your vehicles. I don’t know where the agent was in this situation, but the son was insured with Progressive on his car and carried no UIM coverage. I would have liked to see how the car was titled and how the named insured on the policy read.

The family’s other personal auto policy had lapsed and there was no coverage on the other two family vehicles. As a last chance attempt at securing some type of UIM coverage, their attorneys went after the UIM endorsement on the semi tractor. The court ruled on the side of common sense, and there was no coverage. If they had only 1) paid their car insurance bill or 2) bought the UIM coverage on the son’s personal auto policy then they wouldn’t have had to go through this whole ordeal.