Minnesota's No-Fault law provides benefits to automobile accident victims regardless of whose fault caused the accident. These benefits include payment of all necessary medical expenses for treatment of injuries suffered in an automobile accident, usually up to $20,000, although your policy may provide higher coverage. The law also provides for disability and income loss benefits equal to 85% of the injured person's loss of income from inability to work caused by the injury, subject to a maximum of $250 per week and a total of $20,000. Again, these are minimum coverages, and your policy may provide greater benefits.
On the other side of the coin, the No-Fault Act you right to make a claim for "non-economic" losses. "Non-economic losses" generally refers to "pain and suffering" damages, as opposed to damages for lost earnings or medical expenses. Since the law was passed in 1975, an automobile accident injury claimant must prove that his or her injuries have met at least one of five threshold requirements before a lawsuit seeking damages for pain and suffering can be started. Those threshold damage requirements are:
1. Death; or
2. Medical expenses (exclusive of diagnostic x-rays) in excess of $4,000 ($5,000 if your accident occurred after August 1, 2003); or
3. Disability for 60 days or more; or
4. Permanent disfigurement (i.e., scars); or
5. Permanent disability
The most important of these threshold requirements is the fifth one: Permanent injury. Because future damages are almost always the largest component of a jury verdict in an injury case, and because a finding of a permanent injury is an important element of proof for this type of damage, this fifth threshhold is far and away the most significant.
Most doctors are unable to give us an opinion on the key issue of permanency until a year has passed after the accident. This is because accident victims usually recover slowly for the first year following and injury. If there are disabilities remaining after a year of consistent medical treatment, most doctors are willing to say that the injury is permanent to some extent.
For this reason, it is critically important that a claimant continue to seek treatment for his or her injuries for the year following the accident.
