Ohio Casualty Study Guide

Two Ohio facts reverse answers you have already learned, and they are the most efficient thing on this paper to study first: uninsured motorist coverage is not required here, and workers’ compensation is not sold by private insurers at all. The rest is arithmetic built around them — the limits, who they cover, and how fault is divided before the limits matter.

Uninsured motorist — the coverage Ohio does not require

National courses teach UM as either mandatory or subject to a mandatory offer with a written rejection, because that is how most states run it. ORC 3937.18(A) says the opposite in one clause: an automobile liability policy “may, but is not required to, include uninsured motorist coverage.” There is no offer duty, no signed-rejection requirement and no deemed-inclusion default in the section — a verified absence, read against the whole of 3937.18 rather than inferred from silence.

Expect the stem: a producer places a policy without a signed UM rejection, and you are asked what follows. In Ohio, nothing does.

Where UM is written, its underinsured half behaves differently too. ORC 3937.18(C) makes underinsured motorist coverage difference-in-limits — reduced by the amounts available from the at-fault driver’s liability coverage — and expressly not excess over other applicable liability coverage. Material that has UIM stacking on top is describing another state.

Ohio is a traditional tort state with no PIP mandate; medical payments coverage is optional.

The limits, and the two statutes that reshape them

Financial responsibility is 25/50/25: $25,000 for bodily injury or death of one person (ORC 4509.51(B)(1)), $50,000 for two or more persons in one accident ((B)(2)), and $25,000 for property damage ((B)(3)).

Insurance is not the only way to satisfy it. ORC 4509.45(B)(3)–(5) also accepts a bond, a certificate of deposit of money or securities, or a certificate of self-insurance — self-insurance being open to a person in whose name more than twenty-five motor vehicles are registered in Ohio, which is to say 26 or more (ORC 4509.72). Twenty-five is not enough.

Two more statutes decide how the limits actually pay out.

ORC 3937.44 lets a liability policy provide that all claims resulting from or arising out of any one person’s bodily injury, including death, are collectively subject to the per-person limit. A wrongful-death claim brought by four survivors does not multiply $25,000 by four; it collapses into the one per-person limit.

ORC 3937.46 cuts the other way. An intrafamily liability exclusion may not be applied or enforced against the owner or operator of a motor vehicle in a wrongful-death claim under Chapter 2125 — unless the policy carries uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage under ORC 3937.18 and the intrafamily claim is not excluded from that coverage.

Comparative fault — the people the plaintiff did not sue

ORC 2315.33 is modified comparative negligence with a detail worth slowing down for. A plaintiff recovers only if their own fault was not greater than the combined tortious conduct of all other persons — including persons from whom the plaintiff does not seek recovery. Leaving a negligent party out of the suit does not take their share out of the comparison.

It is a 51% bar: fault greater than the others’ combined fault recovers nothing, while a claimant at exactly 50% still recovers. Damages are then diminished proportionally (ORC 2315.34).

Workers’ compensation — monopolistic, and the numbers that go with it

The structural fact first, because it outscores any figure here. Ohio is a monopolistic state fund. Employers pay premiums into the State Insurance Fund, and the only alternative is BWC-approved self-insurance — a two-year Ohio operating history, certified financials, a surety bond and demonstrated administrative capability (ORC 4123.35(A), (B)). There is no third path and no private carrier. Questions about quoting carriers, endorsements or rating plans have no Ohio analogue.

Coverage is required of an employer that “has in service one or more employees or shared employees regularly in the same business” (ORC 4123.01(B)(1)). BWC administers the fund; the Industrial Commission adjudicates contested claims. The numbers to hold:

Temporary total compensation: 72% of the full weekly wage for the first twelve weeks — capped there at the lesser of the statewide average weekly wage or 100% of the employee’s net take-home pay — then 66⅔% of the average weekly wage, capped at the statewide average weekly wage with a floor of one-third of it (ORC 4123.56(A)). Two rates, two caps, one switch at week twelve.

Filing a claim: one year after the injury or death, or the claim is “forever barred” (ORC 4123.84(A)).

Occupational disease runs on a different clock (ORC 4123.85): within one year after the disability began, or up to six months after diagnosis by a licensed physician, CNM, CNS or CNP, or within one year after death.