It’s a requirement in the State of Missouri that all licensed drivers carry insurance. However, some instances, people don’t have insurance so they buy a six-month policy and it lapses. A lot of times, we have cases where someone was driving a friend’s vehicle, a mother’s vehicle, or a father’s vehicle. They are called a permissive user. They end up hitting one of our clients.
The police officer or whoever says, “Well, they’re uninsured. They don’t have insurance.” Fact of the matter is, it’s partially incorrect and probably wholly incorrect. If an individual is a permissive user, that is the person who bought the insurance policy for their vehicle, gave permission to another person to drive that vehicle, and that person who’s driving is not a named, excluded party on the policy, then that person who’s driving who caused the accident, who claimed to not have insurance, is covered by the original owner’s insurance policy. So we can seek a recovery against the original owner who let that person drive, because that insurance policy will now cover all permissive users, and the friend in our scenario will become a permissive user and thus the coverage will extend to them.