New state auto insurance rules in place

Buffalo, NY (WBEN) As the state budget was enacted, new rules regarding car insurance claims have gone into effect.

Attorney John Richmond says there's a new new 50% fault bar. He says prior to the new budget, the way it worked was NYS was a pure comparative fault state, and what that meant was if you're in an accident, as long as you weren't 100% at fault, you could still recover money or settlement for your injuries, but it would just be reduced by your percentage of faults.. "But now, under the new budget, if you are found to be more than 50% at fault, or more at fault than the other defendants, or the other drivers, saying there's multiple drivers, but really want to look at it as more than 50% at fault. There's a complete bar to recovery, meaning you can recover nothing," explains Richmond.

Another rule change is the elimination of the legal category that protected drivers with serious non-permanent injuries. "Something that also lived prior to this new budget was the 90-180 rule meaning, hey, you're injured, it's real, so you're missing work, or you have a concussion, or you are injured, and but it just hopefully is not permanent, but in 90 of those 90 days out of those first 180 basically you're not able to live the life you normally would, or substantially perform all the duties you normally would, maybe that's things around the house, and go to work, and other things, and now that's gone," says Richmond.

He says now it's even more important again after an accident, you're being seen by the right doctors. "Doctors who will treat you the right way, who know how to properly document your injury, so hopefully the attorney you hire can put their best foot forward and argue that you meet one of the other sections under the serious injury threshold. But it's going to be a lot tougher for people who are injured, and it's not permanent," says Richmond.

Richmond adds insurance companies now are going to be moving even faster. "Get investigators out there to collect dash cam footage, to collect black box status, to collect footage from neighboring businesses or homes, could perhaps ring doorbells, because they're going to want to try to take drivers and push them above that 50% so they have to pay nothing. So it's really important that these cases are investigated immediately, right out the gate," notes Richmond.