Missouri Casualty Study Guide

National material teaches uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage as a matched pair with the same treatment, and teaches comparative fault as a statutory rule. Missouri splits the pair down the middle and puts most of comparative fault outside the statute book entirely.

One coverage is compulsory. The other is not required at all.

Start with the harder rule, because it is the one that surprises people. RSMo 379.203.1 provides that no automobile liability policy may be “delivered or issued for delivery” in Missouri unless it provides uninsured motorist coverage “at limits in section 303.030.”

That is not an offer-and-rejection statute for the family car. There is no rejection form in Missouri, because on a personal auto policy there is no right to reject. None of the section’s five subsections provides for waiver, written rejection or opt-out.

But finish the sentence, because it changes for commercial risks. The same subsection continues “or in the case of any commercial motor vehicle, as defined in section 301.010, any employer having a fleet of five or more passenger vehicles, such coverage is offered therein or supplemental thereto.” For those two categories Missouri drops from provided to offered — so “UM can never be turned down in Missouri” is true of a personal auto policy and false of a fleet.

Note next what the cross-reference actually buys. RSMo 303.030.5 carries the full 25/50/25, property damage included — but RSMo 379.203.1 borrows only “the limits for bodily injury or death set forth in section 303.030.” It takes the bodily-injury figures and leaves the property-damage figure behind, which is why Missouri mandates uninsured motorist bodily injury and does not mandate uninsured motorist property damage.

Now the coverage beside it. RSMo 379.204 is a different section with a different history, and its catchline gives the game away: “Underinsured motor vehicle coverage, construction of policy.” Its entire operative text is a rule of reading:

“Any underinsured motor vehicle coverage with limits of liability less than two times the limits for bodily injury or death pursuant to section 303.020 shall be construed to provide coverage in excess of the liability coverage of any underinsured motor vehicle involved in the accident.”

RSMo 303.020(10) bodily injury limits are 25/50, so “two times” is 50/100. UIM written below 50/100 is construed as excess — stacked on top of the tortfeasor’s limits — rather than difference-in-limits. At or above 50/100 the construction rule does not bite. Nothing in the section requires UIM to be written or even offered.

The duty section has no numbers in it

Three sections in Chapter 303 carry a figure and a fourth carries the duty. Keep them straight.

RSMo 303.020(10) defines proof of financial responsibility as “$25,000 for one person’s bodily injury or death, $50,000 for two or more persons, and $25,000 for property damage.” RSMo 303.190.2(2) sets what a certified motor vehicle liability policy must carry, in the same figures. RSMo 303.030.5 is the trap — it governs the post-accident security deposit and therefore omits property damage entirely.

And RSMo 303.025, the section that actually imposes the duty, sets no coverage limits at all. It requires financial responsibility “conforming to the requirements of the laws of this state” by cross-reference; its only dollar figures are the criminal fines for driving uninsured — a second or subsequent violation carries “a fine not less than two hundred dollars but not to exceed five hundred dollars” (RSMo 303.025.3). If an item asks which section sets the limits a certified policy must carry, the answer is 303.190.2(2) — not the duty section.

Missouri also permits four alternatives to buying a policy (RSMo 303.160): a certificate of insurance, a bond, a deposit of money or securities, or a self-insurance certificate. That last route has a branch worth knowing — RSMo 303.220.1 lets a religious denomination with more than twenty-five members with motor vehicles, which “discourages its members from purchasing insurance, of any form, as being contrary to its religious tenets,” qualify as a self-insurer, alongside the ordinary route for a person in whose name more than twenty-five motor vehicles are registered. Both figures are “more than,” not “or more.”

Pure comparative fault — but cite it carefully

Missouri applies pure comparative fault: the claimant’s share reduces the award proportionately and never bars recovery.

The citation is where candidates go wrong. RSMo 537.765.1 says “the doctrine of pure comparative fault shall apply to products liability claims as provided in this section” — by its own terms the section reaches products liability only, and subsection 3 defines “fault” in six products-specific ways. For ordinary negligence, including auto, the rule came from the Missouri Supreme Court in 1983 and is implemented through the MAI comparative-fault instruction series. Do not cite RSMo 537.765 as the source of Missouri’s general auto negligence rule.

Workers’ compensation: two thresholds and one expiring surcharge

Missouri is a competitive market with no state fund — RSMo 287.280.1 requires an employer to insure its entire liability with “some insurance carrier authorized to insure such liability in this state,” or self-insure “upon satisfying the division of their ability to do so.”

Coverage is required at five or more employees, and at one or more for construction employers — but read the construction test as the verb list it is: employers “who erect, demolish, alter or repair improvements” (RSMo 287.030.1(3)). Family members within the third degree count toward the total.

Temporary total disability is 66⅔% of average weekly earnings capped at 105% of the state average weekly wage for injuries on or after 28 August 1991 (RSMo 287.170.1(4)), not exceeding 400 weeks. Compare permanent partial: also 66⅔%, but capped at 55%. A guide printing one cap for both is wrong.

The waiting period is in a different section again — three days, paid back “if the disability lasts longer than fourteen days” (RSMo 287.160.1). Longer than fourteen, not fourteen or more.

Since injuries after 1 January 2014 the Second Injury Fund pays permanent total disability only: “no claims for permanent partial disability occurring after January 1, 2014, shall be filed against the second injury fund.” A permanent total claim additionally needs “a medically documented preexisting disability equaling a minimum of fifty weeks” in one of four categories.

One time-sensitive figure: the Fund’s supplemental surcharge of up to one percent runs for calendar years 2014 to 2026 and expires 31 December 2026 (RSMo 287.715.6), dropping the maximum combined surcharge from 4% to the base 3% cap absent legislative action.