The Missouri Legislature passed a law recently that could cut your compensation in car accident cases. The law, Mo. Rev. Stat. Section 303.390, says that if you do not have car insurance, you cannot get compensation for pain and suffering, even if the accident was entirely the other driver's fault. Pain and suffering damages, called non-economic damages, are oftentimes the greatest loss one suffers in a car accident.
The thing that you remember most about an accident is not how much your medical bills were, or how much time you had to take off work, but how much it hurt, and how scary it was, and how much of a disruption the accident caused in your life. These are non-economic losses. Because of their significance, they are the losses that require the greatest amount of compensation. This statute takes away that compensation if you do not have car insurance.
It's an absurd law that punishes people for something that has nothing to do with the cause of a car accident. Whether you have insurance on your car isn't going to stop some bad driver from hitting you. I understand the importance of having car insurance. Missouri law requires you to have it and there are criminal penalties for not having it. Adding this unreasonable punishment is entirely unnecessary and will only punish people who did nothing to bring about their own injuries.
If you have further questions, please do not hesitate to contact our firm.