Originally Posted by
TWA884
In California, rental car companies, as any car owner, are required to have basic liability protection and provide it with their base rates. However, that coverage, 15/30/5, is grossly inadequate nowadays and chances are that in case of a loss the rental company will go after the renter to recover any payout.
The whole point of this thread is that in California, whatever state minimum liability coverage the rental company might have, it does NOT extend to you.
In most other states (a few exceptions where it's actually primary), the car company's insurance is secondary to your own...meaning if you don't carry any, theirs steps in (and is, in effect, primary).
In California, that is NOT the case. You have ZERO coverage for liability. Whether you put a $300 ding in someone else's fender or crash into a Rolls-Royce and put a $1,000-an-hour attorney out of work for a year, you are completely, 100% on the hook for damages to a third party.
Now, the third party's legal team may be able to extract some money from the rental company's insurance carrier one way or another, but no matter what, you're going to have hell to pay if you don't have liability coverage with adequate limits.