Car insurance claims in Missouri

Missouri settles motor-vehicle claims by fault, and the statute that compels cover says so in as many words: an owner’s policy must insure the named insured and any permitted driver «against loss from the liability imposed by law» for damages arising out of the use of the vehicle (§ 303.190.2(2)), and § 303.025.1 forbids an owner to operate or keep a vehicle registered without that financial responsibility. There is no first-party benefits layer beside it — neither chapter 303 nor chapter 379 carries a section titled for personal injury protection or no-fault — and so no tort threshold to cross before suing the other driver. How that liability is divided when both drivers were careless is the one question this page does not answer, and the reason is worth stating plainly: § 537.765, which abolishes the contributory-fault bar and applies «the doctrine of pure comparative fault», does so expressly and only «in a products liability claim». A crash is not within it, Missouri’s rule for a collision is judge-made, and the Missouri Supreme Court’s own text could not be read — so the shared-fault rule is left unstated rather than published from a characterisation.

The court deadline is five years, and it is the same five years for the dented door as for the broken wrist (§ 516.120(4)). There is no shorter injury clock to miss and no longer property clock to fall back on, which makes Missouri unusually generous next to the two- and three-year states. The start date is less obvious than the length: a cause of action does not accrue «when the wrong is done» but «when the damage resulting therefrom is sustained and is capable of ascertainment» (§ 516.100). Suing your own insurer is where the text stops short of an answer: § 516.120(1) gives five years on contracts «except those mentioned in section 516.110», § 516.110(1) gives ten years on «any writing … for the payment of money or property», and nothing in either section says which one a motor policy is — so no period to sue the insurer is stated here. What is settled, and worth more than the choice between them, is § 431.030: any contract term that «either directly or indirectly limit[s] or tend[s] to limit the time in which any suit or action may be instituted» is «null and void». A Missouri policy cannot shorten your deadline at all.

The insurer’s clock is almost entirely in the Department’s rule rather than in the statute, and it changes units between subsections. Section 375.1007 lists fifteen improper claims practices and fixes exactly one number — fifteen calendar days to provide the forms needed to present a claim — while acknowledgement is only «with reasonable promptness» and affirm-or-deny only «within a reasonable time». The numbers live in 20 CSR 100-1: ten working days to acknowledge, fifteen working days to accept or deny after all necessary forms are submitted, and then forty-five plain days for each delay letter. Two absences matter as much as the figures. Nothing in the chapter sets a period within which an accepted claim must be paid, and the rule that once set an investigation deadline was rescinded in 2008, so anyone quoting a Missouri investigation clock is quoting a withdrawn rule. Two more provisions repay reading: an unrepresented claimant still in negotiation must be warned in writing thirty days before a first-party time limit expires and sixty before a third-party one (§ 100-1.050(1)(E)), and where the insurer directs a specific repair shop it must have the vehicle «restored to its condition prior to the loss» at no extra cost (§ 100-1.050(2)(F)). Missouri’s own first-party remedy, vexatious refusal to pay, runs through § 375.296 — thirty days must pass after a due demand before suit — and is measured by § 375.420 at twenty percent of the first fifteen hundred dollars of the loss and ten percent above that, plus attorney’s fees, for policies of «automobile … or other insurance except automobile liability insurance». That exclusion is easy to miss and expensive to miss.

On cover and on reporting, three figures are easy to state wrongly. Uninsured motorist coverage is compulsory, and the duty is to provide it rather than merely to offer: no automobile liability policy may be issued without it at limits no lower than the § 303.030 bodily-injury limits, which that section sets at $25,000 and $50,000, and the cover reaches a hit-and-run driver «whether or not physical contact was made» (§ 379.203.1). The duty drops to an offer only for a commercial motor vehicle or an employer with a fleet of five or more passenger vehicles. Underinsured cover is a different thing and is not required: the only underinsured provision in the chapter, § 379.204, tells a court how to construe a UIM endorsement someone chose to buy. As for reporting, § 303.040’s catchline promises «All motor vehicle accidents to be reported» and its text does not deliver that — the written report to the director is due within thirty days, but only where the accident involved an uninsured motorist and killed or injured someone or caused more than $500 of damage to any one person’s property, or where the person reporting is himself uninsured, and it is a financial-responsibility filing rather than a police report. At the scene, § 577.060 attaches with no dollar trigger at all: any accident causing injury, death or damage to another’s property obliges the driver to stop and give name, address, vehicle registration number and licence number to the other party or to law enforcement. The $1,000 in that section grades the offence; it is not a reporting threshold, and the $500 in § 303.030.1 is the point at which the director starts assessing security.