No-Fault insurance lawyer explains that numbers of car accident lawsuits drop while auto insurance rates rise
I received a thoughtful comment from another reader of our Michigan Auto Lawyers Blog. TomH was responding to An Adrian, Michigan car accident victim’s right to bring a personal injury lawsuit, where I discussed Michigan Auto Law’s Lenawee County trial for an auto accident case, and how a recent news article garnered many anti-consumer comments. These comments covered a car accident victim’s right to bring a personal injury lawsuit and recover money for pain and suffering due to another person’s negligence.
Here’s what TomH has to say:
“If the anti-compensatory damages line is truly propaganda by the Michigan insurance companies, the insurance companies need to rethink things. If the maximum possible recoveries are reduced by a factor of 10, being limited to actual damages and removing potential liability for pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, etc., then we all will need only one tenth of the insurance coverage we now have. In turn, our premiums should be reduced by 90 percent.
I do not think the auto insurance companies, who are so good at separating us from our money, could be ignoring this obvious flaw in their arguments.”
Tom, sadly, I wish there were such a correlation. However, as the numbers of auto accident lawsuits have plummeted in Michigan after Kreiner v. Fischer in 2004, the cost of automobile insurance keeps going up. Michigan is one of the few states where the insurance commissioner actually does not have authority to regulate the amount of profits that insurance companies can charge, even though the state of Michigan requires people to purchase insurance. Go figure.
In other words, premiums sadly have no correlation to payouts, and it seems based upon the Angoff Commission Report that the main reason insurance premiums are so high in Michigan is simple: insurance company greed.
