Nebraska Casualty Study Guide

Two code chapters carry this line: Chapter 60 for motor vehicles, Chapter 48 for workers’ compensation. In both, Nebraska’s answer is wider than the national one — coverage most states merely offer is compelled here, a clause most states permit is void, and a compliance menu usually reported as two is four. Its auto figures run both ways: a floor, and a ceiling above it.

25/50/25, and the operator that makes it a floor

Nebraska is a tort state with no mandatory personal injury protection anywhere in Chapter 60. The compulsory list is bodily injury liability, property damage liability, and UM and UIM. Medical payments appears at 44-514(2) only as a component of “automobile liability coverage” for the cancellation article — a definition, not a mandate.

Neb. Rev. Stat. 60-509 sets $25,000 for bodily injury to one person, $50,000 per occurrence subject to that per-person limit, and $25,000 property damage. Read the operator: 60-509 says not less than each figure. 25/50/25 is the least a Nebraska motorist may carry, not the coverage a Nebraska motorist has.

Two mandates, and nowhere to sign them away

Neb. Rev. Stat. 44-6408(1) is not a duty to offer. It is a delivery prohibition on the insurer: no policy “shall be delivered, issued for delivery, or renewed” unless coverage is provided at 25/50 for uninsured motorists under (1)(a) and underinsured motorists under (1)(b). Nebraska compels both where most states compel neither, and the Act runs from 44-6401 to 44-6414 with no waiver form and no rejection mechanism at any limit.

The underinsured trigger is damages-based, not a limits comparison. 44-6406 asks whether the other vehicle’s insurance is less than the insured’s damages, or has been reduced by payments to other claimants to less than those damages — so limits above the insured’s own can still be underinsurance here.

The ceiling above the floor, and a clause that is void

Neb. Rev. Stat. 44-6408(2) lets the insured demand higher limits in writing, but “in no event shall the insurer be required to provide limits higher than one hundred thousand dollars per person and three hundred thousand dollars per accident” — a 100/300 ceiling.

Stacking is settled by statute rather than policy language. Neb. Rev. Stat. 44-6410 bars limits for two or more vehicles, “under the same policy or separate policies,” from being added together, combined or stacked — “except as provided in section 44-6411” — and 44-6411(1) caps recovery across multiple policies at the highest limit of any one of them. Neb. Rev. Stat. 60-310 runs the other way, voiding household exclusions: coverage may not be altered solely because the claimant is the named insured or lives in that household.

Fault, and the route that avoids buying a policy

Neb. Rev. Stat. 25-21,185.09 is modified comparative negligence with a 50% bar, and the comparison is against the defendants collectively. A claimant recovers only where the claimant’s own negligence is less than the total negligence of the parties claimed against; at equal to or greater than that total, recovery is barred outright rather than reduced. Below the bar, the award drops by the claimant’s share.

Insurance is one of four proof methods at Neb. Rev. Stat. 60-528: a certificate of insurance, a bond, a deposit of money or securities, or a certificate of self-insurance. The deposit is $75,000 per vehicle with the State Treasurer, and 60-549 states that figure flat.

Workers’ compensation — four routes, and scattered numbers

Coverage begins at the first employee for most employers; the exemptions at 48-106(2)(a)-(e) are a closed list of five, and the only numeric threshold in it is agricultural: ten or more unrelated full-time employees on each working day for thirteen calendar weeks.

The rate is 66 2/3% of wages at the time of injury at 48-121(1). Loss of earning power takes the same percentage on a different base under 48-121(2), (3) - the difference between the pre-injury wage and earning power afterwards - payable “but not beyond three hundred weeks.” The waiting period is elsewhere: Neb. Rev. Stat. 48-119 sets seven calendar days, and a disability continuing six weeks or longer is computed from the date it began.

Neb. Rev. Stat. 48-145 gives four compliance routes: a licensed carrier; an agreement with a self-insured motor carrier under 48-115.02; a risk management pool under the Intergovernmental Risk Management Act; or self-insurance approved by the Nebraska Workers’ Compensation Court. There is no state fund. A claim runs two years from the accident or the death under Neb. Rev. Stat. 48-137, or two years from the last payment where payments have been made. Choice of physician at 48-120(2)(a) is a prior-relationship test: the physician must have kept the employee’s records before the injury and have a documented history of treatment with the employee or an immediate family member.