Normally, an injured party can only recover from a defendant’s insurance policy the amount stated as the limits of liability. In the case of Kelvin Ward, our firm was able to recover twice as much as the insurance company represented was available in this stacked liability coverage case.
In this case, American Family Insurance represented to us that Mr. Ward could only collect $250,000.00 as a result of his serious injuries when he was ejected out of the back seat and through the windshield because that was all that was available in insurance. Cantor Law Firm did not believe them and filed our lawsuit.
The defendant’s insurance policy did only have $250,000 worth of coverage but American Family knew they owed more. In fact, in another case with the same exact policy language, a different Court had ruled that the policy was poorly written, and because another American Family policy insurance was issued to the policy holder for another vehicle owned by the owner of that vehicle, they owed double.
This is called stacking insurance coverage, and it rarely happens in liability cases, but we did it for our client. There were other technical legal facts in this case, for example, this was a non-owned vehicle and an operator’s policy, but the point is we more than doubled our client’s recovery because we filed a lawsuit and aggressively pursued the matter. And we did it all in St. Joseph Missouri, about a six-hour drive from St. Louis.
Key Takeaways
- Insurance companies don’t always disclose the full coverage available — an attorney can verify the real numbers.
- “Stacking” insurance coverage lets an injured person combine multiple policies for a larger recovery, though it rarely applies in liability cases.
- Filing suit and challenging the insurer’s initial position led to more than double the original settlement offer.
- Technical policy details, like whether a vehicle is “non-owned” or covered under an operator’s policy, can significantly affect a case’s outcome.
- Cantor Injury Law pursues cases outside the St. Louis area, including this one handled in St. Joseph, Missouri.
