There is another issue that often comes up in situations in which a vehicle is totaled. Many people purchase their vehicles with loans; sometimes cars lose their value faster than the loan gets paid off, especially in the first two years of the loan. As a result, sometimes the amount that an insurance company has to pay for a totaled vehicle is less than the remaining balance on the loan.
For example, suppose someone still owes $10,000 on her car, but the value of the car is only $8,000. The insurance company has to pay the value of the car not the amount left on the loan. This person therefore has a deficit of $2,000 which her bank or lender will probably want to collect immediately.
So, this person may be in an accident in which the other person is completely at fault and yet, despite her innocence, owe more than the insurance settlement and have no easy means of getting out of the debt. One way to avoid this is to purchase gap insurance. Gap insurance is a type of insurance that is often offered in conjunction with an auto loan. If the car is totaled and the remaining balance of the loan is more than the value of the car, the gap insurance will pay the bank the difference so that, at the very least, you break even.
If you make a significant down payment, so that it’s unlikely the loan balance will ever be more than the value of the car, then gap insurance would be a waste of money. But, if you’re financing heavily, you should consider gap insurance. Your lender may insist that you carry the coverage.
Many people think that if they fall and get hurt, they automatically have a good case against the owner of the property on which they fell. However, things are not quite that simple. As we have already learned, liability is generally based upon fault (negligence in these cases) and no-fault systems do not usually apply to premise liabilities only car accidents.
In order to have a claim against a landowner (or renter, in some cases) for your slip and fall, you must show that the other party is somehow at fault for your fall. In other words, you must show that the actions or inactions of the property owner somehow were negligent and caused you to fall. You cannot sue someone else for your own carelessness.
Personally, I rarely take slip and fall cases because of what I call the 50/50 factor. When presenting a slip and fall case to a jury, the jury has to decide what percentage the plaintiff is at fault and what percentage the landowner is at fault. Often, a jury is likely to find that the landowner is half to blame and the injured person is half to blame; and in many states with comparative fault systems a 50 percent fault on the part of the plaintiff means that the plaintiff gets nothing. (Of course, if your state allows the injured person to recover damages even if he or she is greater than 50 percent at fault, it is more likely that it might be a worthwhile case.)
When are slip and fall cases more likely to win? Falls because of clear construction defects seem to have the best chance of winning in my opinion. Falls on slippery surfaces, such as on ice or spills, can vary. For example, during a snow storm it might not be negligent for a shopowner to be unable to keep up with clearing the snow; but, many hours after the snow has stopped, there’s more chance that the shopowner is at fault.
Also, in many states, private landowners have less of a duty than store owners to clear snow or other slippery surfaces. Spills in stores that cause a fall may only be good cases if the spill has been there awhile…and you can prove that it has been there quite awhile.
In other words, a landowner or shopowner has to know about or reasonably have had time to discover a spill before they have a duty to clean it up. The shopowner cannot be expected to know the moment a customer spills a bottle of laundry detergent.
But a shopowner must make reasonable efforts to discover spills within a reasonable amount of time. Such efforts might include training employees to check the aisles at certain intervals.
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02022010
1. Car accident is the personal injury lawyers bread and butter
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