Your Automobile Insurance Tort Selection and How It May Affect Your Rights to Recover if You are in an Accident

One of the questions you are asked when you purchase your automobile insurance—whether you live in Pennsylvania or New Jersey–is “What type of tort selection do you wish to purchase?” In Pennsylvania, the choice is between “Full Tort” and “Limited Tort”. In New Jersey, the choice is between “Zero Threshold” (or “No Limitation on Lawsuit”) and “Verbal Threshold (or “Limitation on Lawsuit”). Most insurance consumers probably don’t know what these different options mean. As a result, customers Pennsylvania often purchase Limited Tort and customers in New Jersey often purchase Verbal Threshold for the simple reason that they offer a cheaper premium. What these customers do not realize, however, is that while they may save money on their premiums, they may very well be seriously compromising the ability to get adequate compensation for injuries they suffer in an accident.

In Pennsylvania, a driver who purchases an insurance policy that has the Limited Tort option cannot seek damages against another driver unless he or she sustains an injury that is classified as a “serious impairment” of a bodily function. This standard has tended to be a difficult threshold to pierce. The determination of a serious impairment is made through both the objective findings in the medical records (including amount and nature of treatment needed) and the subjective testimony of the injured person describing the effects of this injury. Furthermore, his limitation applies regardless of the fact that someone else is at fault for the accident. 

There are exceptions which would eliminate the limitations of the Limited Tort option in Pennsylvania. Those exceptions arise when the other vehicle was registered and insured outside of Pennsylvania, the other driver was under the influence of drugs or alcohol, the other driver was uninsured, the injured party was injured while he or she operated or was a passenger in a commercial vehicle (including a public transit bus or a rideshare vehicle like Lyft or Uber), operated a motorcycle (since the law requires that the vehicle be a four-wheel vehicle) or if the injuries party was a pedestrian or a bicyclist. Nevertheless, if your case does not fall into any of these exceptions or if your injury is deemed not sufficiently serious, you would only be able to recover for out-of-pocket expenses such as unpaid medical bills, lost wages or other monetary expenses you had to endure because of the accident.

In New Jersey, a driver who purchases an insurance policy that has the Verbal Threshold cannot seek damages against the other driver unless he or she sustains an injury results in either death, the loss of a body part, significant scarring and disfigurement, a displaced fracture, the loss of an unborn child or a “permanent injury”. In the case of a permanent injury, a qualified doctor would need to certify that the injured person has not recovered and is unlikely to do so after further treatment. New Jersey also has exceptions, those being accidents occurring in the course of employment, accidents caused by a commercial vehicle and accidents caused by drivers of vehicles with policies that were written outside of New Jersey by companies that are not authorized to do business in New Jersey. 

In both states, there have been cases where people suffered injuries that may have seemed serious to laypeople—herniated discs in the spine, non-displaced broken bones, or closed head injuries, for example—that caused a considerable amount of pain and which led to a serious diminution of quality of life. However, for whatever reason, courts decided that these injuries were not sufficiently serious or permanent to allow compensation. If you have Limited Tort or Verbal Threshold and you suffer injuries in an accident, all is not lost. Regardless, you will need a skilled personal injury attorney to present your more challenging case.

The best thing to do is when you purchase automobile insurance, purchase Full Tort in Pennsylvania and Zero Threshold/No Limitation on Lawsuit in New Jersey. Neither of these options impose the limitations that Limited Tort and Verbal Threshold do. Yes, you will pay more in your premium but, should you be in an accident—and you never know when you may be injured in one despite your best, most careful efforts—you will be much more likely to get the compensation that you deserve for all that you endure.