Kansas Casualty Study Guide

Kansas is a no-fault state, and that single fact reshapes the casualty block relative to almost every neighbouring state. The personal injury protection schedule and the threshold that lets an injured person step outside it are the highest-yield material on the Kansas section — and the workers’ compensation exemption right behind them is shaped differently from any headcount rule you have studied.

No-fault, and the schedule that comes with it

The Kansas Automobile Injury Reparations Act, K.S.A. 40-3101 et seq., makes PIP mandatory. Coverage reaches further than most candidates expect: the named insured, resident relatives, operators, passengers and pedestrians struck by the vehicle (§ 40-3107(f)).

The six categories have statutory names — “disability benefits, funeral benefits, medical benefits, rehabilitation benefits, substitution benefits and survivors’ benefits” (§ 40-3103) — and each carries a minimum:

• Medical: not less than $4,500
• Rehabilitation: not less than $4,500 — a separate limit
• Disability / loss of income: not less than $900 per month, up to one year
• Substitution (essential services): $25 per day, up to 365 days
• Funeral and burial: not to exceed $2,000
• Survivors’ benefits: not less than $900 per month, up to one year after death

The trap inside that list is the pair of $4,500s. They are two separate limits, not one shared pool. An item that offers “$4,500 combined medical and rehabilitation” is testing exactly that.

The threshold — because no-fault only matters when you want to sue

K.S.A. 40-3117 lets an injured person step outside the no-fault system at $2,000 in medical treatment — a dollar figure — or on any of the listed serious injuries: permanent disfigurement; a fracture to a weight-bearing bone; a compound, comminuted, displaced or compressed fracture; loss of a body member; permanent injury within reasonable medical probability; permanent loss of a bodily function; or death.

Read the “or” carefully. A fact pattern with a modest medical bill and a broken weight-bearing bone clears the threshold on the second branch, not the first. Questions are usually written to make the dollar figure look decisive when it is not.

Uninsured motorist — mandatory, and at the wrong number if you guess

K.S.A. 40-284 makes UM coverage mandatory at limits equal to the policy’s bodily injury liability limits — not merely at the statutory minimum. Underinsured provisions are included in the same coverage.

Rejection is narrow: only above the statutory minimums, and only in writing. A written rejection binds every insured under the policy and carries forward to renewals with the same insurer unless higher coverage is later requested in writing. And stacking is prohibited — recovery is limited to the highest limits of any single applicable policy, regardless of how many policies are involved.

One more doctrine to hold alongside: Kansas is a modified comparative negligence state under K.S.A. 60-258a(a), which allows recovery only where a party’s negligence “was less than the causal negligence of the party or parties against whom a claim is made.” Because the test is less than, a claimant exactly 50% at fault recovers nothing — a 50% bar.

Workers’ compensation — Kansas counts dollars, not people

This is the fact that most reliably separates prepared candidates from unprepared ones. Most states set a headcount — three employees, five employees. Kansas sets a payroll figure.

Coverage is mandatory for every employer with no employee-count threshold at all (K.S.A. 44-505). The relief is a gross annual payroll of $20,000 or less, for private employers. And the detail that gets asked about is what comes out of that calculation: wages paid to a family member by marriage or consanguinity are excluded, which can drop a small family business under the line even where the raw payroll would not.

An employer complies in one of three ways under K.S.A. 44-532(b): insure with a carrier authorized to write workers compensation in Kansas; show the director that it is a qualified self-insurer with proof of financial ability; or maintain membership in a qualified group-funded workers compensation pool. The statute adds that “the cost of carrying such insurance or risk shall be paid by the employer and not the employee.”

The two clocks: notice to the employer within 30 calendar days of the accident or of injury by repetitive trauma — or 20 calendar days after the last day of actual work if the worker is no longer employed (K.S.A. 44-520). Then an application for hearing within three years of the accident or two years of the last payment of compensation, whichever is later (K.S.A. 44-534). Note that the old limitations section, K.S.A. 44-520a, was repealed in 2011 — study material still citing it is out of date.

Benefits run at 66⅔% of the average gross weekly wage, not less than $50 per week, after a one-week waiting period that is reimbursed if the disability lasts three weeks. The programme is administered by the Workers Compensation Division of the Kansas Department of Labor.

Finally, the insolvency backstop, because it carries a carve-out unique to this line: the Kansas Insurance Guaranty Association pays a maximum of $300,000 per covered claim — but it “shall pay the full amount of any covered claim arising out of a workmen’s compensation policy” (K.S.A. 40-2906). No cap at all on comp.