Reservation Of Rights Letter

Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 01:31 am Post Subject:

Mostly it means that the insurer is reserving the right to subrogate the claim in the event you collect damages from any other party. Since you were not at fault, your insurer is not really responsible for your damages, the at fault party is. Since the at fault party is not insured, your uninsured motorist coverage is paying your claim, and your insurer is within its legal right to recover that money from the third party.

Many times, they sit on the sidelines waiting for their insureds to hire a lawyer, sue the at fault party and obtain a settlement or judgment, then swoop in with their subrogation claim and take 100% of their entitlement. The end result is that the lawyer gets money, the insurance company gets money, and the insured gets what little is left over. For some reason, many personal injury attorneys conveniently forget that an insurance company has subrogation rights and do not factor that into their demand.

Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2010 04:32 am Post Subject:

Also, an ROR should _specifically_ state what rights are being reserved. When I write an ROR (commercial policy) it's usually 10-15 pages long (it's no fun to write).

I've never seen one written to reserve the right of recovery but after reading this, it's the only thing that would even remotely make sense to me.

Only other thing I can think of is if you have uninsured motorist bodily injury coverage.

Most states will hold the rental company (owner) responsible for the use of their vehicle.

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2010 01:04 pm Post Subject:

I've never seen one written to reserve the right of recovery but after reading this, it's the only thing that would even remotely make sense to me.

Most states will hold the rental company (owner) responsible for the use of their vehicle.