In a recent decision made last week, the Mississippi Court of Appeals gave a ruling on a matter relating to insurance claims between states, diverging from the assumptions of the lower court. In the case, the Court decided in favor of a motorist involved in a hit-and-run accident that was aimed against his insurer, GEICO. The motorist, Paul Blanchard, was involved in the accident in Louisiana in December 2015, as was stated in a lawsuit filed three years later.
Blanchard alleged that GEICO denied his uninsured motorist bodily injury benefits claim in bad faith. The crux of the case revolved around a borrowing statute, with the Mississippi Court concluding that the prescriptive period is ten years, not one, as the lower court had previously stated. Full details of the case can be found here.
Although the Mississippi borrowing statute enforces a Louisiana prescription’s barring of Uninsured Motorist (UM) benefits if the claim is accrued in Louisiana, the court discovered it does not address which state’s law would apply to any ‘substantive issues’, that weren’t raised or decided in the trial court.