Most of us are well familiar with life insurance. All forms of life insurance provide a death benefit to a beneficiary. With the exception of suicide, life insurance typically pays benefits in most scenarios whether death was caused accidentally or by natural causes.
Accidental Death & Dismemberment (AD&D) insurance covers and pays benefits for a death or for loss of limb or loss of a sense caused by an accident. Essentially, AD&D insurance covers a subset of events covered by life insurance. Since a policy beneficiary recovering AD&D benefits also usually recovers benefits on a basic life policy, AD&D insurance is often referred to as “double indemnity” coverage. Lest any one think AD&D is useless coverage consider this: accidents are the third leading cause of death in the U.S.
In this series of articles, we are going to take a closer look at the legal issues arising in AD&D cases. As the population continues to age, AD&D case filings will continue to increase. Even lawyers begging off these cases need to know how to spot them for referral purposes to avoid a potential malpractice claim.
In the next article in this series, we will take a big picture look at the major legal issues in AD&D litigation. I welcome your comments below and if you would like to explore any issues beyond the road map I’ve laid out be sure to let me know.
