Why Can’t I Sue the Insurance Company?

When you have a car wreck with another person and you suffer an injury, you then have a claim for personal injury if that person was negligent in causing the wreck.  Negligence means that the person did something that a reasonably prudent person would not have done under the circumstances or that they failed to do something that a reasonably prudent person would have done under those circumstances.  A good example is a person who turns their vehicle in front of your vehicle at an intersection without paying any attention to what was clearly in front of them.  Say for example they were talking on their cell phone, while changing the radio and looking for the map which fell in the floor.  Most of us would say that a reasonably prudent person wouldn’t have been doing those things while they should have been watching ahead of them.  After the wreck, a contact may be made with the other person’s liability insurance company and an insurance adjuster will handle the claim.  If after the extent of your injury and damages are determined a satisfactory settlement can’t be reached, you might contact a lawyer to file a suit.  However, the law in Texas, and in many states, prevents you from suing the other person’s insurance company directly for your injuries, even though the insurance company may ultimately wind up paying for the damages.  Also, you can’t tell the jury that the person who caused the wreck has insurance.  It is forbidden to be mentioned in the trial and if it is mentioned, most of the time, the judge will end the trial by granting what’s called a mistrial, and the case will have to be tried over.  As far as the jury is concerned, the case is solely between you and the person who hit you.  This can be an interesting problem sometimes, if the person who caused the wreck is a very sympathetic person to a jury.  In essence, the insurance company, who will ultimately have to pay the damages awarded by the jury, gets to hide behind their insured and the jury never knows whether insurance is there or how much is there.