Car insurance claims in Utah

Utah is a no-fault state with the smallest benefit package and one of the strictest shared-fault rules in this dataset. Every policy bought to satisfy the owner’s security requirement must include liability cover, uninsured motorist cover, underinsured motorist cover and personal injury protection (§ 31A-22-302(1)) — motorcycles, off-highway vehicles, trailers and semitrailers excepted, and their riders are expressly outside PIP altogether. The PIP benefits are fixed by § 31A-22-307(1): medical, surgical, X-ray, dental, rehabilitation, ambulance, hospital and nursing expenses of «not less than $3,000 per person»; the lesser of $250 a week or 85 percent of lost gross income for up to fifty-two weeks, with the first three days unpaid unless the disability runs past two weeks; a household-services allowance of up to $20 a day for up to 365 days; funeral, burial or cremation benefits of up to $1,500; and $3,000 on death, payable to the heirs. What counts as the «reasonable value» of a medical expense is not left to argument — the commissioner runs a relative value study in the state’s most populous county and publishes the 75th percentile charge for each service, updated every other year, and a court may appoint an impartial medical panel in a disputed case. PIP is payable monthly as expenses are incurred, and benefits are overdue if unpaid within thirty days of reasonable proof, after which they carry interest at one and a half percent a month; if you have to sue to get them, the insurer also pays your attorney’s fee (§ 31A-22-309(5)).

Suing for general damages requires crossing a threshold. Under § 31A-22-309(1)(a) a person who has, or is required to have, PIP may not maintain a cause of action for general damages unless they have sustained death, dismemberment, permanent disability or impairment based on objective findings, permanent disfigurement, a bone fracture, or medical expenses over $3,000. The limbs are alternatives, so a single fracture opens the door. Two boundaries are often dropped: the bar reaches only general damages, leaving economic loss recoverable either way, and it «does not apply to a person making an uninsured motorist claim». Past the threshold, Utah’s comparative-fault rule is stricter than its neighbours’. A claimant «may recover from any defendant or group of defendants whose fault, combined with the fault of persons immune from suit and nonparties to whom fault is allocated, exceeds the fault of the person seeking recovery» (§ 78B-5-818(2)). Because the others’ fault must exceed the claimant’s, a fifty-fifty crash in Utah recovers nothing, where in Nevada and Oregon it recovers half. No defendant pays more than its own share, fault is allocated even to immune persons and non-parties, and in a hit-and-run case the phantom vehicle’s existence must be proved by clear and convincing evidence — which «may consist solely of one person’s testimony».

The deadlines run in three directions and one of them is a trap. A crash injury falls under the four-year catch-all of § 78B-2-307(4), because no section of the limitations chapter enumerates personal injury. Damage to your car is also four years, and the statute says so twice: § 78B-2-307(3) covers «personal property damage to the aggrieved party’s motor vehicle», and § 78B-2-305(1)(c)(ii) expressly lifts motor-vehicle claims out of the general three-year personal-property period, bicycle collisions included. But a wrongful-death action runs only two years (§ 78B-2-304(3)) — half the injury period, on the same crash. Against your own insurer the general period is three years from the inception of the loss (§ 31A-21-313(1)(a)), with two four-year carve-outs: uninsured motorist claims (§ 31A-22-305(11)) and PIP claims (§ 31A-22-307(7)). A Utah policy may not shorten any of these: § 31A-21-313(3)(a) voids a clause limiting the time to less than the statute allows, and also voids a clause prescribing the court in which an action may be brought. And in the other direction, § 31A-21-313(4)(a) means you generally cannot sue your insurer for payment until sixty days after proof of loss.

Utah’s minimum limits are the only ones in this round the statute dates itself: 30/65/25 for a policy issued or renewed on or after 1 January 2025, or a $90,000 combined single limit, with 25/65/15 for policies on or before 31 December 2024 and permanently for a self-insured private rental fleet (§ 31A-22-304). Uninsured motorist cover is in by default and out only on an express writing on an insurer-supplied form that explains what the coverage is for, and once out it stays out until the insured asks for it in writing; underinsured cover defaults to the lesser of the liability limits and the insurer’s maximum available, and can be cut only on an acknowledgment form filed with the department that discloses the extra premium — and because a change of named insured or of liability limits makes the policy a «new policy», that waiver can lapse on an ordinary policy change. Carriers of passengers and school districts must carry $25,000 per person and $500,000 per accident of uninsured motorist cover, and cannot waive it. On the insurer’s clocks, the honest answer is that Utah’s Code does not contain them: § 31A-26-301(1)(b) says the commissioner prescribes by rule «the periods of time within which payment is required to be made to be timely», and § 31A-26-303 lists the unfair claim settlement practices with no day count at all — and expressly «does not create any private cause of action», which is the opposite of Nevada’s position. Utah’s administrative claims-handling rule, R590-190, has not yet been verified against a primary text, so no acknowledgement, decision or payment deadline is stated here beyond the statutory thirty days for PIP. At the scene, Utah requires you to hand over not just your name, address and registration but the name of your insurer and the phone number of the agent or provider, and says that moving your car out of the travel lanes does not affect the determination of fault (§ 41-6a-401). Police must be notified immediately, by the quickest means of communication, where apparent property damage reaches $2,500. The written report is easy to state wrongly: the Department may require a report where there was injury, death or $2,500 of damage, and the ten days then run from the request, not from the crash, with licence suspension as the sanction for not filing (§ 41-6a-402). Whether Utah law allows recovery of inherent diminished value has not yet been verified against a primary text and is not stated here.