The operations of emergency vehicles are a common everyday feature on the streets and highways of the United States. These operations consist of the employment of vehicles that include ambulances, police cars, and fire trucks in response to situations demanding more or less immediate reaction. Due to the frequency of their operations and the nature of their use, emergency vehicles are inevitably involved in accidents that result in the bringing of legal actions seeking to recover damages for death, personal injury, or property damage caused by such accidents.

Emergency vehicles are employed for public purposes and, as their name suggests, are frequently called upon to respond in situations created by public or private emergencies. In some states, governmental units with responsibility for the operations of emergency vehicles may therefore argue that they should be immune from liability in tort actions resulting from the involvement of those vehicles in accidents. A related consideration is the fact that the operators of emergency vehicles are often exempted from the duty to obey traffic regulations during emergency operations. A plaintiff in such an action may assert that emergency vehicle operators nonetheless have a duty to exercise care to avoid injuring others during the operation of their vehicles and that a breach of that duty was the cause of the accident at issue in the litigation. In particular, a plaintiff in such a case may assert that conduct such as the negligent or reckless operation of a police car in a high-speed chase that unnecessarily endangers other drivers or pedestrians should not be excused on the ground that the vehicle was responding to an emergency at the time.

Tort law, the branch of the legal system that deals with the recovery of damages for private injuries or wrongs not arising from contractual relationships, has developed in the United States out of the separate legal systems of each of the states rather than out of a single unified body of federal law. As a result, the legal standards governing tort liability for the use of emergency vehicles will vary from state to state.

The massive collapse of an interstate highway bridge in Minnesota in 2007 has served as a stark reminder of the problems created by the aging infrastructure in the United States. Numerous less dramatic examples of the consequences of failure to properly maintain and repair highways and associated structures such as bridges and tunnels have led to the bringing of legal actions claiming damages for deaths, personal injuries, or property damage caused by such occurrences. Such actions can involve both governmental units and contractors who perform highway repair and maintenance work on behalf of those governmental units.

The maintenance and repair of the public streets and highways are the responsibilities of government at its various levels. As a result, government entities have a duty to properly maintain the public roads and to repair deficiencies in the road system that come to their attention. Actions seeking to recover damages as a result of failure to properly maintain and repair public roadways may involve incidents resulting from a defect existing in a highway itself, or they may be based on conditions at a road repair site, and contractors working at such a site may thus become involved in these suits. The standards for bringing such legal actions are often set out in bodies of statutory law referred to as tort claims acts, which sometimes contain requirements that a claimant provide the governmental unit involved in the case with notice of the claim prior to filing such an action.

Tort law, the branch of the legal system that deals with the recovery of damages for private injuries or wrongs not arising from contractual relationships, has developed in the United States out of the separate legal systems of the individual states, supplemented by a related body of decisional law created in federal courts throughout the country, rather than out of a single unified body of federal law. As a result, the legal standards governing liability for failure to properly maintain and repair the public highways will vary from state to state.

The essential things that have to be proved by a plaintiff in a products liability action against the manufacturer or seller of a car or truck are that the vehicle contained a defect that created an unreasonable risk of danger when the vehicle was used for its intended purpose and that the alleged defect caused the occurrence of a collision or similar incident, for example a vehicle fire, that resulted in the death, personal injury, or property damage for which the plaintiff seeks to recover damages. Such alleged defects in a vehicle may include shortcomings in its design, errors in the manufacturing of its numerous parts and their assembly into a complete car or truck, or failure to properly warn the purchaser or user of some danger inherent in the operation and use of the vehicle.

While manufacturing defects, a term that is here meant to encompass mistakes both in the manufacture of the thousands of individual parts that go into a car or truck and in their final assembly into a complete vehicle, are in one way susceptible of fairly direct proof, a number of difficulties stand in the way of proving such a case. If a part is designed to be configured in a certain way, or the connection between two parts is supposed to be made in a certain way, and the allegedly defective part taken from the vehicle involved in the case is configured in a different way or the connection between parts is shown to be other than as designed, it can be argued that the part or assembly that was put into the suspect vehicle was indeed defective. (It should be noted that the condition of a part after an accident is not conclusive proof of its condition before the accident took place.) The manner in which the manufacturing or assembly defect led to a failure in the vehicle’s normal operation that caused the accident or other incident, however, will still have to be proved. And in many cases, particularly those arising out of serious accidents that result in major vehicle damage, the car or truck involved will have been disposed of and the parts will not be available for inspection or as evidence in court, leaving the proof in the case to be based on the competing opinions of expert witnesses about what aspect of a vehicle and its performance might have been the cause of an accident.

Products liability law in the United States, including automotive products liability law, has grown and developed over more than half a century under the separate legal systems of each of the states rather than as a single unified body of federal law. (The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, popularly known as NHTSA, has enacted a body of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, or FMVSS, with which every new motor vehicle has to comply, and these federal regulations may have some bearing on a products liability action.) While the principles of products liability law in the different states contain many similarities, the legal standards applied in automotive products liability actions involving claims of manufacturing defects will vary from state to state.

The ubiquitous taxicab is a fixture in the more densely populated areas of the United States. The sheer numbers of such vehicles, and the intensive nature of the manner in which they operate, create types and volumes of risks that implicate numerous issues in the area of auto insurance and the insurance coverage afforded in incidents involving such vehicles.

In addition to the usual questions about insurance coverage that are raised by the ownership and operation of any motor vehicle, the operations of taxicabs present problems unique to the use of automobiles for such a purpose. The fact that taxicab rides involve interactions between strangers, and the urgency and stress with which they are sometimes conducted, may result in incidents that raise issues of whether such intentional acts as assaults during the course of a taxicab ride are to be considered accidental occurrences for purposes of determining insurance coverage. Similarly, questions may arise as to whether the actions of passengers are to be deemed a part of the use and operation of a taxicab for coverage purposes. Taxicab operations are often covered by municipal ordinances and regulations that may impose insurance requirements of their own, adding one more layer of legal standards to the laws governing insurance coverage of taxicab operations.

The business of insurance in the United States, including that of motor vehicle insurance, has historically been governed by the separate laws of each of the states rather than by a single unified body of federal law. As a result, the legal standards related to insurance coverage of taxicab operations will vary from state to state, and will be found in the state statutes regulating the business of insurance and in the decisions of courts dealing with insurance law.

Because a substantial number of owners and operators of cars and trucks in the United States fail to maintain adequate insurance coverage or operate their vehicles without any insurance coverage at all, many motor vehicle insurance policies contain provisions for underinsured motorist coverage, sometimes abbreviated UIM, or uninsured motorist coverage, sometimes abbreviated UM. The intent of such provisions is to give persons insured under auto insurance policies and innocent third persons some of the insurance protection they would have enjoyed if the underinsured or uninsured motorist with whom they are involved in an accident had maintained adequate insurance coverage on an uninsured or underinsured vehicle.

Underinsured motorist or uninsured motorist provisions in auto insurance policies generally state that an insurer will provide up to a specified amount of coverage for the benefit of an insured or a third party within the class of persons included in the coverage, if such an individual suffers damages as the result of an accident with a vehicle that comes within the definition of an underinsured vehicle or uninsured vehicle for purposes of the policy. Legal issues that can arise from the system of underinsured motorist coverage and uninsured motorist coverage include the mandatory or voluntary nature of the coverage; the permissibility of “stacking” underinsured or uninsured motorist coverages on more than one vehicle or policy to increase coverage that would otherwise be inadequate to fully compensate a party entitled to receive benefits under such coverage; the effect of consent to settle clauses, which prohibit an insured from obtaining a legal judgment against or a settlement from an underinsured or uninsured driver without the consent of the insurer; and the nature and extent of the insurer’s subrogation right, which permits an insurer that has paid out benefits under the underinsured or uninsured motorist provision of a policy to take legal action against the underinsured or uninsured driver in an attempt to recover some or all of the amount it has paid out under the policy.

The business of insurance in the United States, including that of motor vehicle insurance, has traditionally been governed by the individual laws of each state rather than by a single unified body of federal law. As a result, the legal standards governing underinsured motorist coverage and uninsured motorist coverage vary from state to state, and will be found in state statutes regulating the business of insurance, and in the decisions of courts dealing with issues related to insurance law.