If you are involved in a personal injury claim in Idaho, you may ask for a legal or financial remedy to compensate your loss resulting from the accident. An Idaho resident can file a personal injury claim if he or she is a victim of an accident involving negligence or intentional conduct of another person.
Statute of Limitations
Laws of Idaho give you TWO YEARS time to file your lawsuit if you want to hold a person or a company liable for your injury. As with all lawsuits, there are few points to keep in mind when claiming for damages for personal injury case:
- The two years’ time period is counted from the date when injury occurs. This means that the time starts to run from the date when your accident happened.
- When the time of 2 years is expired, you are no longer eligible to file a personal injury claim.
Auto Insurance Idaho Residents are Required to Carry
Idaho is a state with ‘Fault’ car insurance policy. This means that you are free to apply for a personal injury lawsuit against the other driver. The minimum car insurance coverage in Idaho is:
- $25,000 in case of the injury or death of a person (a passenger, another driver, a pedestrian, etc.),
- $50,000 in case of the injury or death of more than one person in the accident, and
- $25,000 in case of damage to the property
Laws for Determining Who Is at Fault
When it comes to determining the fault in a personal injury case, Idaho is a ‘modified comparative negligence’ state. This means that you can recover compensation from a party that is at-fault more than yourself. However, your recovery will be decreased by the percentage of your own fault. However, if you are more than 50% at fault in an accident, you are unable to recover any damages.
To gather more understanding about this, let’s take a look at an EXAMPLE:
Suppose Mark is driving above the speed limits on a busy highway. All of a sudden, another vehicle driven by Shane turns out in front of Mark trying to overtake him from wrong side with almost no room for his car. As a result, there is a collision. Because Shane should not have pulled from the wrong side, he is at 80% fault for causing the collision. However, since Mark was also speeding above the restricted limit, he is 20% at fault. As a result, if the compensation to be received by Mark was to be $10,000, it will get reduced to $8,000 due to his own partial fault in the accident.
If, in case the fault of Mark would have been more than 50%, he would have not been able to recover anything at all.
Damage Caps in Idaho
Many state have caps on the amount of damages that can be awarded in a personal injury case. In Idaho, the caps apply to non-economic damage in injury cases, such as those for pain and suffering. The limitation of these caps is $250,000 and they do not apply to economic damages like lost wages and medical bills.
