West Virginia Casualty Study Guide

West Virginia’s casualty rules turn on two things a national syllabus will not teach you: a pair of motorist coverages that do different jobs and are rejected in different ways, and a workers’ compensation system that changed hands twice in three years. Get the mechanics of each and the rest of this part follows.

The liability floor, and where it lives

The minimum limits are 25/50/25 — $25,000 for bodily injury to one person, $50,000 per accident, $25,000 property damage — effective January 1, 2016. They are not in the insurance code at all: they sit in §17D-4-2(b), part of the Motor Vehicle Safety Responsibility Law.

Subsection (a) still carries the older 20/40/10, and it is still live text — but only for a policy in effect on December 31, 2015, and only until that policy expires or is renewed. If a question gives you 20/40/10 and a current policy, the answer is that the figure is obsolete.

Uninsured and underinsured do different jobs

Uninsured motorist coverage is mandatory. §33-6-31(b) forbids issuing an auto policy without an endorsement paying the insured all sums recoverable from an uninsured motorist, at limits no less than the §17D-4-2 requirements. On top of that, the insurer must offer higher UM limits — up to $100,000 / $300,000 / $50,000. And the endorsement may exclude the first $300 of property damage caused by an uninsured motorist, which is the only deductible in the section.

Underinsured motorist coverage is not mandatory. What is mandatory is the offer. The third proviso to §33-6-31(b) requires the policy to give the insured an option, at adjusted premium, up to limits not less than the bodily injury and property damage liability limits the insured purchased — and expressly “without set off against the insured’s policy or any other policy.”

Silence rejects

Here is the mechanism that decides real West Virginia claims. §33-6-31d requires the optional UM and UIM limits to be offered on a form prepared by the Insurance Commissioner, at initial application and on request. The applicant must complete, date, sign and return it within 30 days.

A signed form creates a presumption of an effective offer and a knowing election or rejection, binding on all insureds. And under subsection (c), failure to return the form within thirty days creates the same presumption of an effective offer and a knowing rejection. Doing nothing is not neutral — it is a statutory rejection that binds everyone insured under the policy.

One protection runs the other way and is worth knowing: §33-6-31(g) forbids a UM endorsement from requiring arbitration of any claim, from requiring anything of the insured beyond establishing legal liability, and from restricting the insured from employing counsel or instituting proceedings.

Cancelling and nonrenewing an auto policy

Auto termination is tiered, and the numbers are different from the property side. Under §33-6A-1, once the policy has been in effect 60 days or has been renewed, cancellation requires at least 14 days notice for nonpayment of premium and 30 days for every other ground. Nonrenewal under §33-6A-4 takes at least 45 days, and the hearing cost is assessed against the losing party but may not exceed $75.

The permitted grounds include one that is routinely misquoted. It is not simply three moving violations — it is “three or more moving traffic violations committed within a period of twelve months, each of which results in three or more points being assessed on the driver’s record by the Division of Motor Vehicles.” Three minor violations do not reach it.

Workers’ compensation — three dates, not one

West Virginia ran a monopolistic state fund for most of the twentieth century, and the transition out of it happened in three dated steps, all recited in §23-2C-1’s own findings: the enabling legislation in 2005; the employers’ mutual insurance company, successor to the Workers’ Compensation Commission, beginning operation on January 1, 2006; and the state opening to a private, competitive market on July 1, 2008. Saying West Virginia “privatised in 2005” or “in 2006” is wrong on the exam, and the section survives in the code expressly for historical purposes.

An employer who cannot buy coverage goes to the assigned risk plan under §23-2C-10. To qualify it must have been categorically declined by at least two insurers that are not affiliated with each other, and the plan requires all private carriers to participate as a condition of their authority to transact business in this state. There is no single carrier of last resort.

Two exemptions carry numbers that must not be merged. §23-2-1(b)(2) exempts “employers of five or fewer full-time employees in agricultural service.” §23-2-1(b)(4) exempts casual employers, and that is a four-part test: not more than three employees, and employment that is temporary, intermittent, and sporadic in nature, and not exceeding 10 calendar days in any calendar quarter.