Does liability insurance cover you from an uninsured motorist?

Answer 1

No. Liability insurance protects you from claims by third parties if an occurrence is alleged to be your fault and the third party claims compensable damages. It indemnifies you (pays damages on your behalf), and provides a defense (hires and pays an attorney at its own expense-if it wishes to contest liability or damages).

A liability insurance policy is triggered only if the allegations made against you arise from a type of risk contemplated by the policy--for example, an auto liability policy will not apply to a trip-and-fall claim made in a store that you operate.

Uninsured motorist coverage is a different coverage. It pays to you the same kind of damages, based upon an assessment of relative fault and seriousness of damages, that the at-fault party's liability insurance would have paid if that person had liability insurance. It generally applies to only bodily injury damages-not property damage.

A useful paradigm by which to think about it is that liability coverage is "third-party" coverage (pays to injured third parties based upon your fault), whereas uninsured motorist coverage is "first party" coverage which you maintain as a source of compensation for yourself if the at-fault has no bodily injury liability coverage.