As we have discussed, if you own a car, that car insurance is the proper insurance to pay your medical bills for any car accident, whether you are in your car or not. If you don’t own a car but live with a relative (father, brother, uncle, cousin, etc.) that owns a car, then that car insurance is the correct insurance to pay your medical bills, whether you are in that relative’s car or not. If you don’t own a car nor live with a relative that owns a car, then the car you are in is the proper insurance to pay the PIP which will pay 80 percent of medical bills and 60 percent of wages following a car accident.
The scenario presented above presents the issue: what if you don’t own a car but the relative that you live with that owns an operable car doesn’t have insurance because it was cancelled or for any other reason it was not in effect? The answer is that generally under Florida law, you would be able to apply for PIP benefits under the car that you were in, which in this case would be the friend’s car. You would have to prove to the friend’s insurance that you don’t own a car (usually proven though an affidavit) and that your relative’s insurance was not in effect (usually proven through a document from the relative’s insurance stating that the policy was cancelled or not in effect). The friend’s insurance may try to deny the PIP benefits stating that the proper insurance to seek the benefits is through the relative’s insurance; however, the law below stands for the proposition that the law is not going to penalize an injured person because their relative did not carry insurance on the relative’s car.
Please note that if the person that is injured owns an operable car that does not have insurance, the result may be different. In some parts of Florida (depending upon which district – Florida legally is divided into 5 different appellate districts – you live in), you would be able to make a claim for the at fault driver of another car pay your medical bills whereas in other districts, you are not able to sue the at fault driver for the medical bills that would have been paid by the PIP insurance had the injured person with a car carried the legally required insurance. There will be another post that will discuss this issue in more depth.
The cases that stand for the proposition an injured person is not punished or precluded PIP coverage due to a family member who owns an insured motor vehicle see also Farley v. Gateway, 302 So.2d 177 (Fla. 2d DCA 1974); State Farm v. Kraver, 364 So.2d 1259 (Fla. 3d DCA 1978); Gateway Insurance Co. v. Butler, 293 So.2d 738 (Fla. 3d DCA 1974). (claimant entitled to collect PIP benefits through owner of vehicle even though his father, with whom he resided, owned an uninsured vehicle.), Commercial Union Insurance Co. v. Williams, 309 So.2d 617 (Fla. 1st DCA 1975) (claimant entitled to collect PIP through owner of vehicle even though her mother, with whom he resided, had an uninsured vehicle.), Witko v. Liberty Mutual, 348 So.2d 52 (Fla. 4th DCA 1977) (claimant entitled to collect PIP through owner of vehicle even though her mother, with whom he resided, had an uninsured vehicle).
