How does the “no-fault” system for motor vehicle accidents affect plaintiffs?
Under ordinary personal injury law, an injured person must claim that the defendant should pay for his injuries because of some fault on defendant’s part. Even when the plaintiff is successful, there is often times a long wait between the injury and the ultimate payment of money. To solve this problem, many states have enacted “no-fault” automobile insurance systems that seek to provide compensation to individuals injured in automobile accidents without regard to fault. Many of these systems are considered to be first-party insurance systems, which means that individuals who are injured in automobile accidents make a claim for recovery against their own insurance carrier, rather than the insurance carrier of one of the other party’s involved in the accident. Many no-fault automobile systems require that every driver obtain a minimum level of insurance before being allowed to operate a motor vehicle. This purpose of this requirement is to limit situations in which an individual is injur
