Proposition 213 and Injury Claims by Uninsured Drivers in California

If you were driving without insurance when someone else caused the crash, California's Proposition 213 bars you from recovering pain and suffering.

You can still recover your medical bills, your lost wages, and the damage to your car.

The same bar applies to a driver convicted of DUI for the crash and to an uninsured owner hurt while riding in their own car.

Voters passed it in 1996, and it lives in Civil Code § 3333.4.

Courts have recognized real exceptions, including claims against a vehicle manufacturer and claims by the family of someone who died.

If an adjuster has told you Proposition 213 ends your claim, call (888) 713-6653 before you accept that answer.

Proposition 213 applies in "any action to recover damages arising out of the operation or use of a motor vehicle," and it takes away non-economic damages, meaning pain, suffering, inconvenience, physical impairment, disfigurement, and similar losses, from three groups of people.^[1]

• A driver convicted of DUI for the crash. The injured person was driving under the influence in violation of Vehicle Code § 23152 or § 23153 at the time and was convicted of that offense.
• An uninsured owner. The injured person owned a vehicle involved in the accident, and the vehicle was not insured as California's financial responsibility laws require. This reaches an owner riding as a passenger in their own uninsured car.
• A driver without financial responsibility. The injured person was driving a vehicle involved in the accident and cannot show the insurance, bond, or deposit the financial responsibility laws require.

Insurance status is measured at the moment of the crash. A policy that lapsed for nonpayment the week before counts as no insurance, and a policy bought the day after does not help. A driver who borrowed an insured car, or who carries their own policy that covers them in any vehicle, can usually show financial responsibility.

The law also reaches the insurance itself. Subdivision (b) says no liability or uninsured motorist insurer has to pay non-economic losses to a person the statute bars.

Which of the three categories you fall into, if any, is the first question in a California crash claim, because it decides whether the largest part of the case exists.

An uninsured driver's claim is worth the full economic loss the crash caused, which in a serious injury case can be most of the money. Proposition 213 leaves every one of these intact:

• Medical expenses, past and future, including surgery, therapy, medication, and the care a lasting injury will need
• Lost wages for the time you could not work, and lost earning capacity if the injury limits what you can do for the rest of your career
• Property damage, including the repair or value of the car, which Proposition 213 does not touch
• Other out-of-pocket costs, such as travel to treatment, household help, and medical equipment

Past medical expenses are valued at what was paid or is still owed, so how your treatment is billed matters. An uninsured driver who treats on a lien basis because there is no health insurance faces a valuation fight over those bills, the subject of our page on hospital liens and lien-based medical bills in California.

Pure comparative fault still applies, so any share of blame assigned to you reduces the economic recovery as well, under the rules summarized on our page about how California injury claims work.

In a fracture or surgery case, the medical and wage losses alone can be several times the at-fault driver's $30,000 minimum policy, which is why finding every source of coverage matters as much as Proposition 213 does.

The California Supreme Court has read Proposition 213 as a rule about drivers and owners who did not carry insurance, and it has declined to stretch it to people the voters did not name.

In Hodges, the court held that a driver hurt because a vehicle was defectively designed can recover non-economic damages from the manufacturer, because Proposition 213 was aimed at the cost of claims between drivers and their insurers, not at defective products.^[2] In Horwich, the court held that the heirs of an uninsured driver who was killed are not themselves uninsured drivers, so their wrongful death claim for the loss of their family member is not barred.^[3] Who can bring that claim is set out on our page about who has standing in a California wrongful death case.

Two Court of Appeal decisions narrow the bar from other directions. In Montes v. Gibbens, an employee driving the employer's uninsured truck with permission did not have to show his own financial responsibility, so the bar did not apply. In Landeros v. Torres, an unlicensed daughter driving her father's insured car was a permissive user under his policy, and her non-economic award stood. And Nakamura v. Superior Court held that Proposition 213 does not reach punitive damages at all.

A defect claim can sit next to the claim against the other driver, which makes the vehicle itself, the seat, the roof, the airbags, worth keeping after any crash where the injuries seem worse than the impact.

Subdivision (c) restores the right to pain and suffering when a person "described in paragraph (2)" was injured by a driver later convicted of DUI. Paragraph (2) is the uninsured owner.

The text does not mention paragraph (3), the uninsured operator who does not own the car. Read word for word, an uninsured owner hit by a drunk driver keeps the non-economic claim, and an uninsured driver of a borrowed, uninsured car hit by the same drunk driver does not. That gap is in the statute's words, and a case that falls in it needs to be argued on its own facts.

The exception also depends on a conviction. A drunk driver who is never charged, or who pleads to a different offense such as reckless driving, may not trigger it, so the outcome of the criminal case matters to the civil claim.

When the other driver was impaired, the criminal file, the arrest report, and the blood test results become part of the injury case early.

The bar is not limited to suits against the other driver. In Allen v. Sully-Miller Contracting Co., the Supreme Court applied it to an uninsured motorist who sued a construction contractor over the condition of the road, because the injury still arose out of the operation of the uninsured vehicle.^[4]

The same logic reaches a claim against a city or Caltrans for a dangerous road. The government claim rules still apply too, with their six-month deadline, as our page on claims against California public entities explains.

An injury that has nothing to do with operating the uninsured car, such as a fall in a parking lot after you parked, is outside Proposition 213 altogether.

An uninsured driver's injury claim has the same two-year filing deadline as anyone's under Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1. What it lacks is a backstop. Without a policy of your own, there is no uninsured motorist coverage, no medical payments coverage, and no collision coverage for your car.

California's minimum liability limits rose on January 1, 2025, to $30,000 per person and $60,000 per accident, so the at-fault driver's policy may pay more than it once did, but a serious injury still outruns it.^[5] The other sources worth checking are the at-fault driver's employer, the owner of the car if someone else was driving it, a commercial carrier, and any party whose defect or negligence contributed.

For drivers on the other side of this problem, insured and hit by someone with no coverage, our page on uninsured motorist and hit-and-run claims in California explains how your own policy pays.

The economic claim is often large enough to be worth pursuing on its own, and the two-year clock runs on it the same way.