Car insurance claims in Maryland

Maryland is an add-on state: it compels liability cover, a small first-party medical and wage benefit on top of it, and uninsured motorist cover, while leaving the tort action untouched. The compulsory security «shall provide for at least» 30/60/15 «in addition to interest and costs», plus the § 19-505 benefits «as to basic required primary coverage» and uninsured motorist cover «as to required additional coverage» (Transportation § 17-103(b)). The first-party layer is capped at $2,500 for medical, hospital and disability benefits, with 85 % of lost income and a three-year expense window (Insurance § 19-505), which is the other reason the tort claim stays central here. It has two exits, and they behave differently: a § 19-506 waiver is open to anyone, must be an «affirmative written waiver» made by the first named insured on a Commissioner-prescribed form in 10-point boldface after written notice of the cost, binds every listed driver and every household family member aged 16 or over, and «is effective until the waiver is withdrawn in writing»; a § 19-506.1 rejection is available only on a bare-minimum-limits policy and expires at the end of the policy term. Silence produces coverage, not its absence.

On shared fault Maryland is stricter than any comparative-fault state, and the rule is common law rather than statute. The Court of Appeals has twice declined to replace contributory negligence with comparative fault, thirty years apart, and a claimant found negligent recovers nothing at all — no apportionment, no percentage, no threshold. The one carve-out that matters in a crash is statutory and absolute: seat-belt non-use is off the table entirely, as evidence of negligence, as evidence of contributory negligence, as a limit on liability and as a subject counsel may raise at trial (Transportation § 22-412.3(h)).

The court deadline is three years from accrual for everything — injury, vehicle damage and the action on the policy alike — under a single section. The insurer’s clock is narrower than in most states. Maryland fixes no general acknowledgement, investigation or affirm-or-deny period: § 27-303 lists ten practices and § 27-304 eighteen more, all in quality terms, and searching both for «days», «business day», «working day» and «calendar» returns nothing, with the structural difference that § 27-303 reaches a single act while § 27-304 reaches only conduct «committed with the frequency to indicate a general business practice». Whether the Maryland Insurance Administration’s own claims-handling regulation sets such periods has not yet been verified against a primary text and is not stated here — the publisher’s document paths could not be opened, so no chapter of COMAR is cited anywhere on this page, even though § 27-1001(e)(3) shows that some regulatory investigation period exists. What is in statute is a thirty-day payment clock for the first-party benefits, with 1.5 % simple interest per month on anything overdue, and a consent-and-pay pair on the uninsured motorist route.

Maryland’s most distinctive machinery is its first-party bad-faith route, and it has three real clocks. A complaint stating a cause of action under Courts § 3-1701 «shall first be filed with the Administration»; the insurer then has 30 days to file a written response with the documents from its claim file, copied to the insured; and the Administration has 90 days to decide whether the insurer was obliged to cover the claim, whether it failed to act in good faith, and what is payable. The sting is in the same subsection: «the failure of the Administration to issue a decision within the time specified … shall be considered a determination that the insurer did not breach any obligation to the insured» (Insurance § 27-1001(e)(1)(ii)). Attorney’s fees are recoverable on a good-faith finding but capped at one-third of actual damages, delay alone is not bad faith where the insurer met the statutory or regulatory investigation period, and an adverse decision can be taken to a hearing within 30 days and then to a circuit court de novo. On cover, two things that summary pages get backwards: uninsured motorist coverage cannot be waived away — § 19-509(c) says every policy «shall contain» it, § 19-509(e)(1) floors it at the Title 17 amounts and defaults it to the policy’s own liability limit, and § 19-510 permits waiver only of the excess over the minimum, and only where the liability limits exceed the minimum — and it reaches «property damage, including loss of use of the insured vehicle», not only bodily injury. Enhanced underinsured motorist coverage is the default on a new policy issued on or after 1 July 2024 rather than an upgrade to ask for, and unlike ordinary UM it is «without any reduction» for what the at-fault insurer paid (§§ 19-509.1(c)(1), (h)(2)). A policy clause requiring binding arbitration of a UM or EUIM dispute «is prohibited and is of no legal effect» (§§ 19-509(j), 19-509.1(k)), and stacking is barred both duplicatively and supplementally, with EUIM carved out of the supplemental bar (§ 19-513(b)). Being uninsured costs the § 19-505 benefits as well as the registration (§ 19-513(c)(2)). Two words on the word «Administration»: the 15-day written crash report goes to the Motor Vehicle Administration and the bad-faith filing to the Maryland Insurance Administration. That report is due only where the accident results in bodily injury or death, must be accompanied by evidence of insurance, and is not required at all where a police officer investigated and filed a report — the ordinary case (Transportation § 20-107). There is no dollar reporting threshold anywhere in the reporting sections read; the scene duty is broader, triggered by damage to an attended vehicle or property as well as by injury, and equally without a figure (§ 20-104).