Posted On: June 5, 2008, 5:49 pm CDT

Posted By:

insurance law A new insurance law in Washington has changed the definition of "accident". "Ethel Adams Law" is named after a woman who was injured in March 2005 when her car was hit in an incident of road rage by a pickup truck driven by Michael R. Testa. In November, Testa was sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison for trying to ram Adam's truck on Aurora Avenue North. He caused the multi-car accident that injured Adams, sending her into a coma for nine days. After the accident, Adams' insurer, Farmers Insurance, at first refused to pay Adams' claims because according to them, Testa was trying to cause a wreck and the crash was not an accident. Outrage over the case in which Farmers eventually decided to pay the claims, prompted the State to change the definition of "accident" to "an occurrence that is unexpected and unintended from the standpoint of the person who is injured." In a statement, Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler said, "Ethel Adam's insurance carrier tried to apply an imaginative interpretation of the law to keep from paying her claim. This new law bears her name with the hope that no other innocent insured will have to go through the nightmare Ethel experienced