Major Car Accident Verdict in the NJ State Supreme Court won by Franklin Solomon of Weitz & Luxenberg
Christina DiProspero v. Barbara J. Penn, et al. (A-66-03)
JUSTICE ALBIN delivered the opinion of the Court.
The 1998 Automobile Insurance Cost Reduction Act (AICRA), N.J.S.A. 39:6A- 1.1 to –35, provides automobileinsurance policyholders with a choice: lower premium payments in exchange for limiting their right (and the right ofthose covered by the policy) to sue for noneconomic damages if injured in an accident. 1 That option, known as the “limitation on lawsuit ” threshold, restricts an accident victim covered by the policy from suing a defendant fornoneconomic damages unless she suffers “a bodily injury which results in death; dismemberment; significantdisfigurement or significant scarring; displaced fractures; loss of a fetus; or a permanent injury within a reasonabledegree of medical probability, other than scarring or disfigurement. ” N.J.S.A. 39:6A- 8(a).
The 1988 verbal threshold, the predecessor to the limitation on lawsuit threshold, required the accident victim toprove that her injury satisfied at least one of nine statutory categories in order to qualify for recovery ofnoneconomic damages. L. 1988, c. 119, § 6. In Oswin v. Shaw, we concluded that under the verbal threshold, inaddition to proving that her injury fit within one of the applicable statutory categories, the accident victim had toprove that she suffered a serious life impact. 129 N.J. 290, 318 (1992). AICRA ’s limitation on lawsuit threshold,which is significantly different from the verbal threshold, has only six categories and does not contain languagerequiring that an accident victim prove that the injury caused a serious life impact.
In this appeal, we must decide whether Oswin ’s serious life impact standard applies to AICRA ’s limitation onlawsuit threshold. The plain language of the statute, a comparative analysis of the old and new lawsuit thresholds,and a survey of AICRA ’s legislative history persuade us that the Legislature did not intend to engraft the Oswinlanguage onto the limitation on lawsuit threshold. We conclude that an automobile accident victim who is subject tothe threshold and sues for noneconomic damages has to satisfy only one of AICRA ’s six threshold categories anddoes not have the additional requirement of proving a serious life impact.
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Major Car Accident Verdict
Major Car Accident Verdict in the NJ State Supreme Court won by Franklin SolomonOur own Franklin Solomon in the NJ State Supreme Court won a major car accident verdict
