FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - what are the liability insurance options for German driver renting from Hertz in NY?
Old Mar 3, 2018 | 9:17 pm
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jackal
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Originally Posted by geometry
is $1-mil really enough in 2018? according to my neighbor who is an ambulance-chaser lawyer.(it's okay, he doesn't mind the name), most of the cases around here rarely settle for less than 1.5-mil to 2-mil for auto injury cases... more if deaths are involved... I didn't believe him when I first him, but he took me to court to observe a couple of times and he was right.
Most people whom I know--or at least those I'm in a position to know what their auto insurance policy limits are--have policies ranging in the $100,000-300,000 range.

Of course, most of those people are not high-net-worth individuals, and their houses are typically worth less than their coverage limits are (or they rent).

How to Know if You Have Enough Auto Insurance - The New York Times seems to dispute your claim that most cases settle for $1.5-2 million:

According to a service called Jury Verdict Research, the median jury award for liability cases in 2010 for vehicular accidents was just $19,806.

That said, outsize awards are common enough (topping out at just over $13 million that year) that the average award was $181,197. And according to ISO, an insurance risk information service, about 5 percent of bodily injury claims in 2010 were for more than $100,000 while about 2 percent reached $300,000.
FWIW, https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/insu...lity-coverage/ suggests:

You might not need much liability coverage if you’re young and have no assets to protect — in other words, if suing you would be pointless to the other party.

But if you own a home and have savings, you need enough liability insurance to cover their value and let you sleep at night.
Most people I know follow that rule of thumb and cover their assets plus an extra margin. That usually falls well short of $1 million.
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