Mastering Uninsured and Underinsured Motorist Arbitrations
Initiating arbitration, conducting discovery, obtaining an enforceable award, and recovering allowable costs in UM/UIM arbitrations.
Uninsured and underinsured motorist arbitrations should be relatively straightforward and self-executing. However, they are not. The California Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist Law, Insurance Code section 11580.2, set out to provide a prompt and relatively inexpensive resolution of disputes between an insured and his or her insurer as an alternative to full-scale litigation and a trial. In fact, the law pre-dated the California Financial Responsibility Law and the operative discovery statutes. As such, there is no clear path to securing an arbitration and no set procedures for conducting the actual arbitration.
This article will clarify what is established by statute and case law and provide valuable suggestions to allow the process to proceed smoothly.
