Source: https://www.atlanta-injury-attorney-blog.com/uninsured-motorist-cle-presentation/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 20:30:52+00:00

Document:
UM insurance is insurance against the lack of insurance.
How to Find and Stack Policies?
Who insures the car your client was in?
Is your client named in any other excess policies or on any work vehicles? Any motorcycle policies.
Who does the client lives with that is related by blood or marriage and do they have other insurance policies?
If the client is of student age, do they live with divorced parents and perhaps have two residences.?
State Farm writes a separate policy for each vehicle and they will stack?
The Named Insured and Relatives of the named insured who live with the named insured.
These insureds have the UM policy following them around like a force field. If they are run over while walking in the street at McDonalds by a getaway car from a bank robbery, they are insured against that loss by an uninsured motor vehicle.
A Client can be a resident of more than one household?
Permissive users of the UM insured vehicle.
Passengers in the UM insured vehicle.
Can I Sue for the Liability and UM limits when my client is a passenger?
Must move to serve by publication promptly. Waiting four months to serve by publication when you know that they are out of state at the time of the filing of the complaint is a lack of due diligence. Pickens v. Nationwide 197 Ga. App. 550 (1990).
OCGA 33-7-11 (e) includes language establishing a continuing duty to exercise diligence in finding the driver for 12 months. If you ever do get wind of where they actually are, you also have to get them served with due diligence, regardless of how long it has been.
pretend to work for the defendant so the jury does not see the word insurance. It’s their call.
United Auto Refuses to pay after a verdict as their insured did not show up for trial.
Uninsured Motorist Insurance is a Matter of Contract Law and the Contract has Strict Notice Requirements. As a basic rule, if the UM policy is drafted such that notice to the carrier is a condition precedent to coverage and you fail to do it, the policy will provide no benefit.
State Farm is the worst because it must be in writing. In Lankford. v State Farmprovide written notice to sf or one of its agents as soon as reasonably possible.
Allstate says “as soon as practicable” or it used to and was not a condition precedent. This may have changed.
Cotton States said notified promptly but in no event later than 60 days.
Mercury Insurance: argue it’s not a condition precedent to coverage.
Progressive just lost an argument that 11 months was too much of a delay, so don’t give up.
“We recognize that our jurisprudence on the question of what constitutes sufficiently prompt notice under an insurance contract like Bishop’s is not easily harmonized. Indeed, some of our prior decisions are difficult to reconcile with each other, as is not uncommon in an area that calls for a fact-specific inquiry. And we are mindful of the critical importance of enforcing contracts as written; a legal system that does not undermines civilization itself.
(c) Eells next argues that the trial court erred in determining that there was no legal justification for the nearly two-year delay between the time of the accident and the time he provided written notice to State Farm, and that the trial court thus erred in granting summary judgment. He contends that he did not know he had coverage and that the delay was justified because the policy language was ambiguous as to whether an insured pedestrian, as opposed to an insured occupying a vehicle, would be covered.
While it is true that an insured “is chargeable with awareness of the insurance coverage it solicited, and with checking the policy to see that proper coverage had been obtained,” Atlanta Intl. Properties, Inc. v. Georgia Underwriting Assn., 149 Ga.App. 701, 702(2), 256 S.E.2d 472 (1979), it is well settled that an insurance policy must be read from the point of view of a layperson, rather than an insurance expert or attorney.
Remember you either need to serve the actual defendant or get the Court to issue an Order that the Defendant shall be served by Publication pursuant to OCGA § 33-7-11(e). Remember to follow through with the statutory steps necessary for service by publication to stick the UM in the case.
Always run skip traces on the Defendant when you send the demand.Why? 1) You may find that they have moved to a favorable county, so go ahead and file suit if that has happened and lock it in. 2) If there is trouble locating their address, you know you need to be very careful as the SOL approaches.
Do not wait until two weeks before the statute expires. File your cases at least 2 months prior and longer if there were troubles early on with the skip trace.
What needs to go into the Motion for Service by Publication? Sometimes Judges are pretty cool about this. Assume they will not be.
“On June 11, 2004 , 15 days before the statute of limitation expired, 1Montague filed the instant personal injury suit naming Camilo and Baker Imported as defendants.” They sued the employee, the employer and the UM.
Employer Baker was timely served. The UM insurer was served as an unnamed defendant. The employee, Camilo, was not served and 9 days after filing a “non est” was returned. She don’t live here. Oh crap.
The Defense filed a Motion to Dismiss for the defendant employee.
The employer also argued if you don’t have the employee, you don’t have me. “Baker Imported moved for summary judgment on the ground that it could not be held vicariously liable under principles of respondeat superior because the dismissal of the complaint against Camilo was a judgment on the merits. Baker Imported also argued that it was entitled to summary judgment on Montague’s negligent entrustment claim because there was no record evidence supporting that theory of recovery. The trial court subsequently granted summary judgment to Baker Imported, leading to this appeal.
This argument is tricky, so follow along. Motions to dismiss for failure to perfect service are not adjudications on the merits if granted. Motions to dismiss for missing the statute of limitations are decisions on the merits. The Appellate Court ended up ruling that because the trial court dismissed on the failure to serve, it thereafter lacked jurisdiction to also rule on the motion based on the statute of limitations. Plaintiff lives to fight another day.
Generally speaking if the tortfeasor has tendered and the UM is disputing medical causation of the injuries, the trial court will allow you to get into the DUI facts even though you cannot get punitive damages from a UM carrier.
Some savvy UM carriers will stipulate not only to negligence but to medical causation of the injuries and bills as well and if they do that, then they can get a Motion in Limine granted keeping out all of the DUI facts as they are irrelevant and prejudicial.
Liberty Mutual wrote the tortfeasor policy and the UM policy. Liberty told the family that the 25/50 policy was being exhausted between payments to them and a third claimant so the family took less and then wanted to get the rest from the UM. Liberty turned around after the less than limits settlement and claimed that they did not exhaust the liability policy, contrary to what they said.
In June 2009, a vehicle Mabry was driving in connection with his employment was struck by a vehicle being driven by Maurice Pope. Mabry sustained an injury to his back and, as a result, underwent surgery and extensive medical treatment. Mabry averred (in a March 14, 2014 affidavit) that, as a result of the collision, he had been unable to work since February 8, 2010. Pope had liability insurance through Warner Insurance Company, with policy limits of $100,000.Warner Insurance paid to Mabry the policy limits of $100,000, and he released Pope except to the extent other insurance coverage was available, including UM coverage. At the time of the collision, Mabry had in effect three State Farm automobile insurance policies, each of which carried $25,000 of UM coverage, for a total of $75,000 in UM benefits. Mabry also had optional medical coverage through the policies, pursuant to which State Farm paid $25,000 in medical benefits for his treatment in connection with the collision. Mabry additionally received workers’ compensation medical benefits in the amount of $62,307.29 (as of June 20, 2013). Mabry’s medical expenses exceeded $114,932.45 (as of January 18, 2011). Mabry also received workers’ compensation disability income benefits totaling $99,596.92 (as of March 14, 2014). As of that date, he had lost earnings totaling $159,926.48.
Qualifying each prospective juror as to a possible relationship with a nonparty liability insurer that has an interest in the outcome of the case must be done “before the parties begin to strike a jury[,]” because the parties have “the right to a panel of impartial [prospective] jurors from which to select the trial jury.” (Punctuation and footnotes omitted.) Lewis v. Emory Univ., 235 Ga. App. 811, 813-814 (1) (509 SE2d 635) (1998). See also Atlanta Coach Co. v. Cobb, 178 Ga. 544, 555 (174 SE 131) (1934) (accord).
An Insurer has 60 days after a demand is made to pay a covered loss.
If a judgment is entered against the UM motorist/carrier a plaintiff can then pursue a claim for the bad faith statutory penalties.
If a finding is made that an insurer, in bad faith, refused to pay a covered loss the plaintiff can seek 25% of all reasonable attorney’s fees in prosecuting the claim for bad faith statutory penalties.
The purpose of Georgia’s service laws is to give the defendant fair notice of the lawsuit against him.1 See Melton v. Johnson, 242 Ga. 400, 403–04, 249 S.E.2d 82 (1978).
When you cannot serve the Defendant, you can get nominal service against the UM carrier. If you have a crummy tortfeasor carrier, sometimes it’s great when you cannot find and serve the defendant. Make an effort that will satisfy the diligence requirements, but secretly you may hope that the better quality UM carrier is up to bat first.

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