Two Years, and Where the Money Actually Is After a Serious Alabama Crash

Attorney Answer

Two things matter more than anything else right now, and both are clocks. Alabama gives you two years to sue, and with a permanent brain injury the money almost certainly is not in the at-fault driver's minimum policy — it is in the uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage you may be able to stack.

Take the deadline first. Ala. Code § 6-2-38(l) requires that all actions for injury to the person, not arising from contract and not otherwise enumerated, be brought within two years. Two years is short by national standards, and it does not pause because you are still treating or because an insurer is still "reviewing" the claim. If a brain injury is affecting memory or organisation — and that is exactly what these injuries do — the calendar is the thing most likely to be lost. Write the accident date somewhere permanent today.

Now the part almost nobody is told. Alabama's minimum liability limits are set by Ala. Code § 32-7-6 at $25,000 for bodily injury to one person, $50,000 for two or more, and $25,000 for property damage. A permanent brain injury will exhaust $25,000 before the hospital admission is paid for. So the real question is not what the other driver's policy says — it is what coverage sits behind it.

That is Ala. Code § 32-7-23. Every automobile liability policy issued in Alabama must include uninsured motorist coverage unless the named insured rejected it in writing. Two features of that statute matter enormously here:

"Uninsured motor vehicle" includes an underinsured one. Subsection (b)(4) defines it to include a vehicle where the sum of all bodily injury liability limits available after the accident "is less than the damages which the injured person is legally entitled to recover." So if the at-fault driver carried $25,000 and your damages are far greater, your own UM coverage can be reached even though the other driver was technically insured. - You may be able to stack. Subsection (c) limits recovery under any one automobile insurance contract to the primary coverage plus additional coverage for additional vehicles, "but not to exceed two additional coverages within such contract." Read the other way, that permits up to three coverages within one policy. On a household policy covering several vehicles, that can be the difference between $25,000 and $75,000 of available coverage.

Because the description you gave is brief, be aware of one more Alabama rule that shapes everything: Alabama is one of the few remaining states that applies contributory negligence, under which a plaintiff found even slightly at fault recovers nothing. It is a judge-made rule rather than a statute, and it is why insurers in Alabama press hard on any suggestion the injured person contributed. Do not concede fault in a recorded statement.

What you can do

1. Write down the date of the accident and count two years forward. That is your outside limit under § 6-2-38(l). Treat any earlier deadline an insurer gives you as separate and additional, not as a substitute. 2. Gather every automobile policy in your household, not just yours and not just the one on the car involved. Under § 32-7-23(c) the number of vehicles on a policy can multiply the coverage available. 3. Ask each insurer, in writing, for the declarations page and for a written statement of the uninsured and underinsured motorist limits, and whether UM was ever rejected in writing. A rejection has to be in writing to be effective. 4. Ask the at-fault driver's insurer, in writing, to disclose the policy limits. 5. Get the medical documentation of permanence in the file. "Permanent brain injury" is a legal conclusion that has to be supported by treating-physician records and usually neuropsychological testing. That documentation also drives the value of the claim. 6. Do not give a recorded statement to any insurer before speaking with a lawyer, and do not sign a release. In a contributory negligence state a single sentence about what you were doing can end the claim.

⏱ Time limits apply. Two years from the date of the accident under Ala. Code § 6-2-38(l), and if anyone died as a result, two years from the date of death under § 6-2-38(a). Uninsured motorist claims are contract claims against your own insurer and can carry their own, shorter notice conditions inside the policy — read the policy's notice and suit provisions and comply with them even while the two-year clock runs.