Car Accident Lawyer, Eagleswood NJ

No. New Jersey's no-fault medical coverage does not extend to motorcycles, so PIP under N.J.S.A. 39:6A-4 does not pay a rider's bills, even when the rider also owns an insured car. Treatment goes through your health insurance, or through medical payments coverage if you added it to the motorcycle policy. What you keep in full is the claim against the driver who turned across your lane, for the bills, the lost income and the injury itself. Insurers like to argue that a rider was speeding or hard to see, so the helmet, the gear, the bike and photographs of the spot should all be kept as they are. Call us before the bike is repaired or salvaged.

Probably not for your own injuries, if you were driving your own uninsured car. N.J.S.A. 39:6A-4.5 bars a person who was required to carry medical expense coverage and did not from recovering for losses suffered while operating the uninsured automobile, even when the other driver was entirely at fault. The bar is narrower than insurers make it sound. It reaches the uninsured owner, not the passengers, and it generally does not apply to someone driving another person's insured vehicle. Whether coverage had truly lapsed is also a question of fact, because cancelling a policy requires proper notice. Bring us the policy, the cancellation letter and the crash report before you accept that nothing can be done.

No, it does not end the claim, and it has nothing to do with who caused the crash. In New Jersey the failure to wear a seat belt can be raised only on damages: the defense may try to show that particular injuries would have been avoided or less severe with the belt on, and a jury may reduce the award for those injuries alone. Proving that is the defense's burden, usually through expert testimony, and injuries the belt would not have prevented are untouched. Be truthful about it with your doctors and with us, do not volunteer opinions to an adjuster, and call us so the medical evidence is developed properly.

Your health insurer pays first, and your auto policy's PIP coverage picks up what is left. New Jersey lets a driver choose the health-insurance-primary option in exchange for a lower premium, and if you chose it, crash treatment is billed to the health plan, with PIP under N.J.S.A. 39:6A-4 covering deductibles, copayments and eligible care the plan does not pay, up to the PIP limit. Two problems come up. Some employer plans refuse to be primary for auto accidents, and Medicare and Medicaid cannot be chosen as primary at all, in which case the auto insurer pays subject to the policy's terms. Send us the declarations page and the health plan booklet before the bills go to collections.

Yes. Whether a summons was written has no bearing on your right to bring an injury claim, because a ticket is the State's business and the claim is yours. A trooper who did not see the collision may decline to charge anyone when the accounts conflict, and that is a judgment about what could be proved in municipal court, not a finding that nobody was careless. The civil case asks a different question under a lower standard of proof, and it is answered with the report's diagram and measurements, the vehicle damage, photographs and witnesses. The State Police report is the place to start. Send us the case number if the trooper gave you one, and we will order it.