Quote Originally Posted by 00tec View Post
I know someone trying right now to get out of progressive because of this:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sourc...CI-gP2AxFyK_bA
I looked into this some more, and as usual, the general public knows dick about what they are talking about and are throwing a fit over things they are making zero effort to understand.

First, the driver that killed this comedian's sister was insured by, and defended in court by Nationwide.

Second, as I quoted before, of course you aren't entitled to the policy limit just because someone else didn't have enough insurance to cover your damages. The way that UIM (under insured motorist) coverage works is that your UIM coverage will make up the difference between what the other guys was able to pay, and what is left of your damages/injuries. When this kind of situation happens, your insurance company is now saddled with whatever liability the at-fault person had in causing your damages. The company treats it just like they do every other claim, where they will only pay what they feel they are liable for. Just because they now have to pay for the difference, doesn't automatically mean that they are going to stroke you off a check for your full policy limits.

When there is a disagreement about the amount an injury/death is worth, then you basically have to bring suit against your own company. Suing your own company is apparently against the law in Maryland, so they had to sue the at fault driver (why they wouldn't do that in the first place is beyond me).

Progressive probably did try to short this poor dead girl on the settlement amount, and ended up in court over it. Now, they've got a jury full of people looking at pictures of a dead girl, and an attorney hired by the family telling them how bad Progressive is. The jury gets their emotions up and slaps Progressive with some $760,000 for bad faith. Progressive would have ended up paying a lot less money if they had kicked a little more money the family's way in the first place.

Long story short, this comedian is probably pretty upset and ran his mouth about Progressive defending the at-fault driver, when that is not at all what happened.