The automobile insurance contract agrees to pay about the insured's behalf all sums for which he shall become legally obligated. When litigation is resorted to, the existence of this obligation is set not by the insurer but through the use of the legal theories obtaining in the jurisdiction the location where the action is tried. In line with the study conducted by Dr. Richard M. Heins in California:
It had been easily indicated that considerable differences exist both regarding procedural and substantive law in various states.

The common law theories of duty, causation, imputed negligence, gross negligence, assumption of risk and contribution have been generally recognized in the common law but they are utilized for other ways in numerous jurisdictions.
For the level of the obligation, some victims will probably be overpaid, while others will be given niggardly treatment.

Delays in the operation with the court system to handle automobile litigation have already been noted. This defect merits more detailed consideration. Using La County, California, for example, it had been found from an analysis of car accident litigation there through the period 1943-54 that, although twenty-one new judges had been added during that period for the superior court system, the delay in the docket for jury trial had increased from five months to eighteen and one- half months. The backlog of cases awaiting a hearing had increased from 8,550 in 1953 to 10,573 in 1955 and was still growing in the rate of five hundred cases monthly.

"While the common time between your injury and also the filing with the complaint remained around 10 months, the common time involving the complaint and also the trial and also the judgment had increased from 1.Four years to 2.8 years." Appeal from judgment would extend the plain-tiff's waiting period still longer. This delay places the innocent victim within tremendous handicap. "The longer the delay, the higher the pressure for an out-of-court settlement underneath the actual damage suffered. The truth that 89 % from the cases filed are compromised or dropped indicates the magnitude from the problem."

Naturally the findings in La county aren't necessarily associated with court-system delays through the entire nation. But they indicate the sizable time barrier with which victims could be confronted. It is frequently required to have recourse for the courts so that you can have responsibility fixed and also to get the adequate recovery in the wrongdoer or his insurer. Automobile insurance is only a scheme to fund loss; it is operational quite aside from the legal machinery that allocates loss. Delays and inefficiencies in the latter work a hardship on the sufferers regardless of the presence of the former.

Dual Protection. To explain the essential nature and significance of automobile insurance, a sociological viewpoint continues to be taken. An endeavor has been created to relate it for the crash problem and also to reveal it as the origin of that fund from where flows most of the compensation obtained by innocent victims, especially those suffering bodily injury or death.

From this approach one might conclude that automobile liability insurance is actually protection for your victims of motor vehicle collisions. Sight should not be lost from the fact, therefore, that it was originally designed as protection for the motorist. It provides him with vital services, such as the investigation of claims, the arrangement of settlements, the handling with the legal defense, as well as the payment of judgments in the behalf. But, in protecting the motorist, it also protects the victim. It performs a dual function simultaneously reflecting the dual nature of the law of fault itself.