No excuse. No apologies for the obvious.
Anyone who falls in this category should carefully consider whether you want to be an insurance expert...
...or pay a bit more to have an independent agent who actually looks out for your a$$, because "cheapest" has consequences (as does doing it without a local independent agent, regardless the price point).
Free advice.
This has been an issue for a long time actually. It applied 50 years ago when I was 16 and wanted to drive a wealthy relative’s car and he refused out of concern I wouldn’t be covered. I can see the insurance company not covering the accident if an undisclosed minor was driving but that was not the case here. He should take this to court and sue the insurance company.
This is ridiculous and California shouldn’t allow this, either. What’s next? Dad’s homeowners refuses to pay for the fire because he failed to disclose his niece and nephew, who like to skateboard, sometimes visit and skateboard on the driveway?
That basically includes every living person on this planet......................
"Preciado admits he hastily filled out the forms when he applied for auto insurance."How many of us have ever read the details of a policy down to that level? You count on your agent to honestly tell you what you are buying and inform you of things like "listed excluded drivers."
Do I need to list all my relatives and friends? Acquaintances? People in my neighborhood? Maybe I should just give the phone book to the insurance company and say "All of these people are excluded."
It's a HELL of a lot easier to say who is included rather than excluded. That's what a reasonable person would expect.
I would think this wouldn't pass the "reasonable man" concept in law.
I wonder if USAA has a similar provision?
Should an insured exclude the entire U.S. Army?
(Asking for a friend.)
there’s a lot of fine print in those contracts including a clause that they can deny a claim, cancel your policy & return any unearned premium paid.
best case use an agent you know that you can have a personal trusting relationship with....may be worth a few bucks more in premium some day?
I know someone who was not at fault in an accident. Someone backed into him. He didn’t honk so he was deemed partially liable.
"Well...there's the tire guy down at Firestone that pulled my car into their garage. Oh and...the valet at the Hilton in Tampa. Then, there's that carjacker down on 5th & Vine St."
He needs an attorney. This is classic post-claim underwriting.
Insurance companies are not allowed to do this in my state.
I am a Washington State attorney that regularly sues insurance companies.
If this had happened in my area, I would gladly represent him on a contingent fee basis that puts all of the risk of paying the attorney’s fees on the insurer. We would be asking for damages for emotional distress, and treble damages. Money for him; money for me.
I find it hard to believe California’s laws in this regard are not similar to my state’s.
Insurance companies should not be allowed to charge for unlicensed residence of a house. Just because my kids might be of driving age doesn’t mean they drive. It is fine for the insurance company to not cover if they turn out to be driving and cause an accident. But don’t penalize insurer because of their family.
I am guessing there is more to this story.
I am an expert on this topic:)
In most states any driver in the household or any driver using the vehicle with permission are automatically covered. Excepted drivers are drivers specifically excluded via a form the state insurance board promulgates. For example, in Texas, this form is called a 515A:
https://www.snapmga.com/downloads/en/en_texas_exclusion_of_named_drivers.pdf
Besides excluding the driver as I describe above there is a policy form called a “Named Driver Policy”. This is what it says, only the drivers specifically listed on the policy are covered. Here is how it works in Texas starting in 2020:
“A named driver policy is a car insurance policy that only provides coverage for drivers specifically named on the policy and not for all individuals residing in the insured’s household. House Bill 259 prohibits insurers from delivering, issuing for delivery, or renewing named driver policies on or after January 1, 2020. Instead, insurance companies can exclude family members and other household residents from coverage only if those persons are specifically named and excluded on the policy. When you purchased your Texas car insurance policy, you had two options: you could cover everyone who uses your car or opt for a more restricted definition of who is covered in exchange for a lower price. Many people chose the second option to save money”.
I’m shocked that California is “behind” Texas in doing away with named driver policies because they are consumer adverse, especially with folks who are not primarily English speakers. I’m very shocked that the liberal CA dept. of insurance didn’t side with the consumer. IMO this situation would not hold up in court because I’d guess that the policy that was issued has nothing regarding declining coverage for non-licensed individuals in the household. Would this same company deny coverage because there was a newborn in the household?
This claim should be paid.
Years ago I worked for an auto insurance company. A female customer called just to let the company know she’d changed her name because she got married. They immediately upped her rates because now her husband had access to her car. She said, “My husband never drives my car,” but it didn’t matter. She still had to pay more. She raised quite a stink and accused the company of sexism. Since men didn’t change their names when they got married, the company would not necessarily know if they got married and their wives had access to their cars.
damn... i park outside the garage... the whole neighborhood has access to my truck
“His insurance company, National General, later told him in a letter that, since Preciao had not named his son as an excluded driver, his policy was being rescinded, and, as a result, his claim was denied and his premium was refunded.”
Canceling the insurance retroactively like this should be highly illegal. Just imagine that you house burns down and the insurance company just cancels your insurance retroactively for any number of reasons. You didn’t have a smoke detector in a certain location or whatever. This just wrong on so many levels.
Did he buy it from a lizard?
Insurance carriers will calculate their premiums based on the risk presented by a particular policy. In doing so, they rely on information provided at the time the policy is bound. If the policy application asked for the number of persons age 14 and over in the household, and the insured did not disclose somebody, and then signed the policy application affirming all the information was correct, then he obtained the coverage under false pretenses.
1 they demand you give them private information on who lives in your home.
2 How did the agent know to ask when the kid was not involved in the accident?