§ 9-11-67.1.Settlement offers and agreements for personal injury, bodily injury, and death from motor vehicle; payment methods

This section grew out of disputes over time-limited settlement demand letters in motor vehicle injury cases and the bad-faith litigation those demands can spawn. It applies to a written offer to settle a personal injury, bodily injury, or death claim from a motor vehicle collision, made or assisted by an attorney, at any point from when the claim accrues until the named defendant has filed an answer — or, if there are multiple named defendants, until all of them have filed their initial answers or been found in default. Subsection (b) lists the material terms such an offer must contain, and states these are the only material terms: an acceptance deadline of not less than 30 days from receipt by certified mail or statutory overnight delivery; the monetary amount; the party or parties to be released; whether the release is full or limited, itemized by releasee; the claims released; a payment deadline of not less than 40 days from receipt; and, unless the offeror waives it, a requirement that the recipient supply a sworn statement about insurance coverage by a date also not less than 40 days out. The offer must also include medical or other records sufficient for the recipient to evaluate the claim.

Anything an offer includes beyond that list is an immaterial term the parties may agree to in writing, and a recipient’s departure from an immaterial term doesn’t expose it to suit so long as it otherwise complies with the safe harbor in subsection (i). Subsection (f) protects a recipient who seeks written clarification about the terms, release, liens, subrogation, or similar facts — that request isn’t treated as a counteroffer, and neither is a proposed release the recipient offers when the original offer didn’t include one, though trying to change a material term is not a mere clarification. To accept, the recipient provides written acceptance of the material terms in their entirety, and the offer itself must go out by certified mail or statutory overnight delivery, reference this Code section by name, and include contact information for the acceptance. Payment satisfying the monetary term may be made by cash, money order, wire transfer, a cashier’s check, an insurer’s draft or bank check, or electronic funds transfer.

Subsection (i) is the section’s safe harbor: there is no civil action for an alleged failure to settle a motor vehicle personal injury, bodily injury, or death claim where the recipient, by the offer’s own deadlines, provides a writing accepting the material terms except the payment amount, a sworn coverage statement if one was required, and payment of the lesser of the amount demanded or the available bodily injury liability limits. That protection applies broadly — even to an offer that purports to disclaim this Code section — except that a recipient who already failed to comply with a properly made offer under subsection (b) doesn’t get the safe harbor’s benefit on a later offer. Subsection (j) carves out product liability claims, including failure-to-warn claims, from the section entirely.