Garden Prairie man paralyzed by uninsured driver

In November, a Garden Prairie man was holding a yard sale in the from yard of his home on U.S. Route 20 when a car driven by a young man careened off the road in into the yard sale, where he hit the man and a female customer.  The driver of the car had no insurance and explained to authorities that he looked down to change a song on his MP3 player and then "blacked out". 

The car accident severed the man's spinal cord and left him paralyzed below the waist.  He was hospitalized for 19 days at St. Anthony's Hospital and has not returned home yet and he goes through in-patient rehabilitation to help him adapt to his injuries and help him care for himself.

Uninsured motorist coverage is one of the coverages you get when you buy full coverage on your automobile.  It covers you anytime you are injured by a driver who has no liability insurance, even where as here, you are a pedestrian and not in a car at all.  Uninsured motorist coverage is one of the most important types of insurance you can buy to protect you and your family in the event of an accident, and we strongly recommend to everyone that they buy as much of this type of insurance as they can comfortably afford.

One of the interesting things about this case is that the young man claimed to have "blacked out."  This would be the basis of claiming an "Act of God" defense on his behalf.  In essence this defense is that some unpredictable, outside event actually caused the accident, such as a seizure of some kind.  The Act of God defense is an affirmative defense, which means the burden of proof on it rests on the defense. 

However, in this case, since the claim would be made against the victim's own insurance through the uninsured motorist coverage, the insurance company in the Illinois uninsured motorist claim would not have access to any medical records that would help them prove the defense.  This is because of the privacy rights of the uninsured driver.  Therefore, in most uninsured motorist cases, this would not be a viable defense.