If, as a part of your business, you or your employees drive as a part of their work, that driving can take a toll. That toll can lead to road rage by you or other drivers on the road.
Road rage is responsible for about two-thirds of all traffic accident deaths, which makes it more dangerous than intoxicated driving. Aggressive driving is contagious as well — about half of all victims of aggressive driving respond with aggression. An aggressive response can quickly turn a personal injury claim into a wrongful death claim because more than a third of all road rage incidents involve a firearm.
If you are injured due to aggressive driving, you can sue for road rage, just as any other type of personal injury caused by wrongful behavior. In Iowa, you can recover for:
Past, present, and estimated future medical expenses
Past, present, and estimated future lost income
Pain and suffering and other intangible losses, such as mental anguish; and
Out-of-pocket expenses
You can also recover for damage to your vehicle, although strictly speaking this is not personal injury.
The statute of limitations sets the deadline for you to file a lawsuit over your claim. If you miss the deadline, your claim will die unless an exception applies. In most cases, you must file a personal injury claim within two years of the accident, and you must file a wrongful death claim within two years of the date of the victim’s death. There are exceptions. A late-filed lawsuit could be thrown out of court for failure to meet the statute of limitations deadline.
Road rage can be a criminal offense as well as a civil offense. While a criminal prosecution applies the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard of proof, a civil lawsuit applies the much more lenient “preponderance of the evidence” standard — a “more likely than not” standard of proof. It is far easier to win a civil lawsuit than to win a criminal prosecution.
Courts may award punitive damages, known in Iowa legal circles as exemplary damages, only under limited circumstances. Even if you deserve compensatory damages (medical expenses, pain and suffering, etc.), you will not receive punitive damages unless you meet the applicable legal standards, which include:
You must prove your entitlement to punitive damages by “clear, convincing and satisfactory evidence,” a standard that is higher than the “preponderance of the evidence” standard but lower than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard.
You must prove the defendant exhibited “willful and wanton disregard” for your safety
To collect full punitive damages, you must prove the defendant directed their conduct at you.
If someone dies in the accident, the victim’s estate administrator or close relatives may file a wrongful death claim. The plaintiff may claim damages for:
Medical bills
Funeral and burial expenses
Lost earnings
Loss of bodily function before death
The family’s loss of the value of the deceased victim’s services
Property damage
The victim’s pain and suffering prior to death
In Iowa, there is no cap on punitive damages, as there is in some states.
Unfortunately, auto insurance does not cover road rage. Insurance companies refuse to cover road rage because it is intentional rather than careless behavior. Their exclusion is problematic not only for an aggressive driver who may face personal liability but for victims who may not recover the value of a substantial claim from a penniless defendant.
The so-called “deep pockets strategy” is designed to help you recover the full value of your claim, even if insurance refuses to pay for punitive damages. The most popular tactic is to find a third party to hold responsible for the damages, including the following possible co-defendants.
If the defendant was on duty at the time of the accident, you can probably hold their employer liable for their misconduct under the legal doctrine of respondent superior.
Sometimes you can hold the manufacturer of a defective product responsible for an accident. This is even if the driver’s aggressive driving was also partially to blame for the accident. For example, it might apply if the victim’s gas tank exploded due to both aggressive driving and a defectively manufactured gas tank.
Jonathan Schmidt is the principal attorney with 303 Legal, P.C. He practices in the areas of business and litigation. He can be contacted at jonathan@303.legal or www.303.legal.
