Wisconsin Auto Insurance & Crash Law Case Authority Library

Core Wisconsin Statutes

• Wis. Stat. §344.62 — motor-vehicle liability insurance requirements.
• Wis. Stat. §632.32 — motor-vehicle insurance policy requirements, UM/UIM and permitted exclusions.
• Wis. Stat. §895.045 — comparative negligence.
• Wis. Stat. §§893.80 and 895.46 — governmental claims and public-employee liability issues.

Leading Wisconsin Decisions

• Anderson v. Continental Insurance Co., 85 Wis.2d 675 (1978) — first-party insurance bad faith.
• Folkman v. Quamme, 2003 WI 116 — insurance-policy ambiguity and contextual interpretation.

Wisconsin automobile coverage should be analyzed under current §632.32, current compulsory-insurance requirements, later appellate decisions and the specific declarations and endorsements issued for the risk.

Folkman: read the whole policy and identify the actual limit

Folkman v. Quamme, 2003 WI 116, ¶¶2, 24, 75, addresses contextual insurance-policy interpretation. The court found the policy’s bodily-injury limit unambiguous in context and applied a $50,000 maximum for the accident before it, reversing the court of appeals.

The insureds’ separate status did not create a separate limit for each person under that policy. This is a fact- and wording-specific decision, not a rule that all policies have that limit. Check the current statutes, complete policy and later treatment before applying it.