Important news for all Oregon State Farm auto claims. The Oregon Supreme Court has announced the outcome of Batten v. State Farm in favor of Oregon policyholders.
Unlike most insurers, State Farm has been writing insurance on separate vehicles as separate auto insurance policies. This means that if one person owns more than one vehicle and insures them with State Farm Insurance, they likely have multiple separate insurance policies. The Oregon Supreme Court decided in Batten that since the policies are separate their Personal Injury Protection, Uninsured and Underinsured Motorist policy coverage "stacks" on top of each other.
What is the effect? In one of our cases that is pending in federal court, the client owned three vehicles, each insured under separate auto insurance policies with State Farm Insurance. Instead of the $250,000 in insurance coverage for Underinsured Motorist for a single policy, the Oregon Supreme Court's decision in Batten means she now has $750,000 in coverage when all three of her $250,000 policies are stacked. Given the very serious injuries and a pending brain surgery, this gives our law firm the ability to obtain a more reasonable amount of compensation for her medical bills, lost wages and personal losses.
If you were seriously injured and need more than one PIP policy for medical care or wage loss, or if you need more coverage for an Uninsured or Underinsured Motorist claim, and you had more than one vehicle insured by State Farm at the time of your loss, you have stacking insurance coverage. There are many other instances where multiple different underinsured motorist insurance policies can stack.
Since our office deals with serious and catastrophic injury cases, this is an important outcome for our present clients, as well as future clients with serious injury claims. Call our office to discuss how this could impact your potential State Farm case outcome, or any case where the person injured may have insurance in addition to the vehicle, rental vehicle or rideshare company's insurance policy.