Many people think that if they are injured in a hit and run accident cannot make a claim for personal injury because the other driver is no-where to be found. This is definitely not the case. You can make a claim on your own policy under the uninsured motorist coverage which, is typical coverage that you pay for when getting your policy.
I would recommend people try to keep these limits as high as you can afford because they are very important. The minimum uninsured policy you can carry in Massachusetts is $20,000.00 / $40,000.00. What that exactly means is if an individual is injured in an auto accident the maximum he can recover against his own insurance is $20,000.00. If there are multiple people injured in an accident the most the collective group can recover is $40,000.00.
The difficulty with making an uninsured claim on your own policy is that the insurance company uses adjusters to deny coverage or limit the amount you can recover. It’s somewhat of a delicate situation because you pay for this insurance and the insurance company wants to limit the amount you receive. This is why it will most likely be in your benefit to engage a personal injury lawyer to represent you in this matter.
If you are a passenger in the automobile at the time you must first make a claim with the insurance policy that you are named in. If you are not named in any policy then you must look to your household to any policy your family might have.
In the insurance world family means “blood, adoption, or marriage.” Blood meaning you are blood related such as a sister, brother, mother, or father etc; adoption obviously means you are related by adoption; and marriage means you are related by marriage.
If you are not a member of a household and you are not named personally on a policy you can make a claim on the insurance policy of the car that you were a passenger in.
To make a claim for a hit and run it is done very similarly to making a claim from an identified or a third party claim. Basically your records and bills are obtained, lost wages are calculated, pain and suffering is quantified and a demand letter is sent. In an ideal world the insurance company would just simply pay up the policy limits and call it a day, but this is rarely the case as insurance companies do not like to part with their money that easily. So the negotiations begin. This is where obtaining a lawyer can definitely be at your advantage.
If the insurance company is not offering a satisfactory amount of compensation at this point the only alternative a claimant has is to make a claim through the arbitration process. Note you are making a contractual claim at this point and in your contract (or if you are benefiting from the contract as a passenger) it states arbitration is the only avenue to resolve disputes for unisurance claims. This varies greatly from claims where there is an identified third party in which case you would most likely go to court to litigate the case. Arbitration is a streamlined process where cases are heard in front of neutral judges and the decisions are final or binding.
