Uninsured driver’s damage-limit challenge left unresolved

The constitutionality of a state law that bars uninsured drivers from recovering noneconomic damages will have to wait for another case.

The Missouri Supreme Court on June 27 declined to address a challenge to the law that plaintiff Susan Bridegan brought, after defendant Gary Turntine ran a red light in Grandview and injured her.

Bridegan won her case at a bench trial and was awarded about $10,000 for her medical bills. But Jackson County Circuit Judge John Torrence said he could not award her any noneconomic damages, citing a 2013 Missouri law that generally bars injured drivers from recovering such damages if they fail to carry state-mandated liability insurance.

According to briefs in the case, Bridegan had purchased a policy from the dealer that protected its financial interest in the vehicle, but it didn’t provide any liability coverage for her.

At oral arguments in March, an attorney for Bridegan argued that the statute violates the Missouri Constitution’s guarantee of the right to have a jury determine damages.

The problem, Chief Justice Paul C. Wilson wrote for the Supreme Court’s six-judge majority, is that Bridegan had agreed to have her case tried by a judge, not a jury.

“In doing so, she waived her constitutional right to a jury trial and is bound by that waiver,” he wrote. “As a result of that waiver, Bridegan necessarily abandoned her claim that [the 2013 law] violated that same right.”

Judge George W. Draper III dissented but did not write separately to explain his reasoning.

Had the court reached the merits, the case could have helped define the limits of lawmakers’ ability to restrict damage awards for injured plaintiffs. Both the Missouri Association of Trial Attorneys and the Missouri Organization of Defense Lawyers had watched it with interest. MATA argued in an amicus brief that the law should be struck down; MODL, joined by several insurance associations, argued that the law was a proper exercise of the legislature’s authority.

The case is Bridegan v. Turntine, SC99700.