A system in which your own insurer pays your medical bills after a crash regardless of who caused it - used in a minority of states, and it limits when you can sue.
In a no-fault state, someone injured in a car crash turns first to their own insurance policy for medical expenses and certain other economic losses, no matter which driver was responsible. The coverage that does this is usually called personal injury protection. The point of the system is to get treatment paid for quickly without waiting for anyone to establish who was at fault.
The trade-off is the part people are rarely told about: in exchange for prompt payment, no-fault states restrict the right to sue the other driver for pain and suffering unless the injury crosses a threshold set by that state. Some states define the threshold by the nature of the injury; others define it by the dollar value of the medical bills. Below the threshold, the claim for non-economic damages simply does not exist.
Most states are not no-fault at all, and a few let drivers choose between a no-fault policy and a traditional one at purchase. So two people with apparently identical injuries can have completely different rights depending on the state, and occasionally depending on a checkbox on a policy application neither of them remembers.
The moment worth asking about is when an insurer says a threshold has not been met, because that single determination can be the difference between a claim and no claim. It is also worth asking early rather than late in a no-fault state: personal injury protection benefits usually carry their own notice and application deadlines, separate from and much shorter than the deadline to file a lawsuit.
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