Over a million residents of Michigan own boats. These boats range from used pontoon boats to new luxury yachts. Some boats cost just a few thousand dollars, while others cost millions of dollars. But, as we at Insurish LLC, serving Northville, MI, and surrounding towns, constantly remind our customers, the deciding question for whether you should include your boat in your umbrella policy—designed to protect you from catastrophic consequences of a lawsuit after a boating accident—isn’t how much you paid for your boat. It’s how much your boat could cost if you accidentally lose in court.
Michigan’s boaters are unusually safe boaters. Nonetheless, statistics from a recent year recorded 181 boating accidents, resulting in 33 fatalities, including 20 drownings, along with property damages of $20 million.
Michigan is a no-fault state for car accidents, but it is not a no-fault state for boating accidents. If you do not operate your boat with a reasonable standard of care, and the injured party does not have insurance of their own to cover their property losses and medical bills, they can look to collect from you. And if you own the boat, you can be held responsible whether you were operating the boat at the time of the accident or not.
In one Michigan boating injury case, the jury awarded plaintiffs $4,600,000 after an accident resulting in death and severe personal injuries to a survivor.
Could you pay a $4,600,000 judgment? Could you pay a million or even a hundred thousand dollars without financial ruin?
If you can’t, the protection you need for your boat—no matter how little or how you paid for it—may be an umbrella policy. As your agent at Insurish LLC, serving Northville, MI, and surrounding towns, about the umbrella policy you need.
