Vermont Casualty Study Guide

Two systems carry the Vermont weight on the casualty exam, and each breaks a pattern candidates arrive with. In auto, Vermont sets uninsured motorist limits higher than its liability minimums, which is the reverse of what candidates expect. In workers’ compensation, Vermont sets no employee threshold at all, where the trained reflex is to answer with a number.

Auto — read which section a number comes from

Vermont’s compulsory minimums live in 23 V.S.A. § 800(a): an owner or operator may not operate without a liability policy or bond “in the amounts of at least $25,000.00 for one person and $50,000.00 for two or more persons killed or injured and $10,000.00 for damages to property in any one crash.” So 25/50/10. The statute also allows an alternative: “evidence of self-insurance in the amount of $115,000.00” filed with the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles.

Vermont is a tort (at-fault) state. It mandates no PIP, and medical payments coverage is optional.

Now the part that trips people. 23 V.S.A. § 941 is not the liability-minimum section — its subject is “insurance against uninsured, underinsured, or unknown motorists,” and the numbers in it are UM/UIM limits, not liability limits. Reading a figure out of § 941 and calling it the compulsory minimum is the single easiest way to get this topic wrong.

UM and UIM — mandatory, and higher

§ 941(a) makes the coverage mandatory: no policy “may be delivered or issued for delivery in this State with respect to any motor vehicle registered or principally garaged in this State unless coverage is provided” against uninsured, underinsured or hit-and-run motorists. This is not an offer-and-reject coverage in Vermont.

§ 941(c) sets the floor: “not less than $50,000.00 for one person and $100,000.00 for two or more persons killed or injured.” That is double the liability minimums for bodily injury.

The property-damage figure works the other way, and the notation matters. § 941(a) says UM property damage coverage “shall be sufficient to indemnify a claim for damages to which the claimant is legally entitled of no more than $10,000.00 per claim, subject to a $150.00 deductible.” That is a ceiling, not a floor. Writing Vermont UM as “50/100/10” in the same shorthand you use for liability invites exactly the wrong reading of that third number.

UIM is not a separate mandate with separate limits — it sits inside the same § 941 requirement, and § 941(f) defines an underinsured vehicle by reference to the insured’s own UM limits.

Negligence — where exactly 50% lands

12 V.S.A. § 1036: contributory negligence “shall not bar recovery… if the negligence was not greater than the causal total negligence of the defendant or defendants, but the damage shall be diminished by general verdict in proportion to the amount of negligence attributed to the plaintiff.”

Read the operative phrase carefully — “not greater than.” A plaintiff at exactly 50% is not greater than the defendant’s 50%, so they recover, reduced by half. At 51% they are barred. This is the modified comparative rule with a 51% bar, and the whole question is which side of the line equality falls on.

For drivers the voluntary market will not take, 8 V.S.A. § 4241 requires all insurers licensed to write automobile insurance to cooperate in the Vermont Automobile Insurance Plan — a plan “for the equitable apportionment among insurers of applicants for insurance who are unable to procure that insurance through ordinary methods.”

Workers’ compensation — no number to memorise

Here is Vermont’s genuine oddity. Asked for the employee threshold for workers’ compensation, the reflex answer is one, three, or five. Vermont’s statute names none.

21 V.S.A. § 687(a) requires employers, “not including State, county, or municipal bodies,” to secure compensation. Who is covered is then settled by the definition of worker in § 601, which works by exclusion:

• casual employment “of casual nature, and not for the purpose of the employer’s trade or business”;
• agriculture or farm employment for an employer “whose aggregate payroll is less than $10,000.00 in a calendar year, unless the employer notifies the Commissioner”; and
• sole proprietors or partner owners of an unincorporated business, subject to a multi-factor test.

Benefits run at two-thirds of the average weekly wage after a three-day waiting period (§ 642(a)(1)), and total weekly wage-replacement benefits may not exceed 90% of the employee’s average weekly wage (§ 642(c)(1)). The maximum and minimum are not dollar figures at all. § 642(a)(2) says only that compensation shall be “not more than the maximum nor less than the minimum weekly compensation”; the 150% and 50% of the state average weekly wage figures are defined in § 601, and they reset every 1 July.

And the deadlines are three separate clocks, not one:

• notice to the employer — “as soon as practicable” after the injury (§ 656). No fixed period.
• a claim for compensation — within six months of the injury, or of death (§ 656).
• an outer bar — three years from the date of injury to commence proceedings (§ 660(a)); two years from reasonable discoverability for occupational disease.