New Jersey adopted the No Fault Act in 1972. As initially enacted, the statute barred civil suits for soft-tissue injuries unless a claimant who was subject to the threshold incurred medical expenses that exceeded a certain amount. The act was amended in 1988 to replace the “monetary threshold” with a “verbal threshold”: A definition in words of the type of permanent or significant injury that would permit an accident victim to recover damages for noneconomic loss (pain and suffering). The act was amended again in 1998 pursuant to the Automobile Insurance Cost Reduction Act (AICRA) that replaced the old verbal threshold with a new verbal threshold (a “limitation on lawsuit” option). See “History of the Verbal Threshold”, page S-3.
There were three published cases under the old verbal threshold: Rybeck on constitutionality, Rugerman on fractures and Falcone on scarring. The first cases published after the adoption of the new verbal threshold were Siriotis and Brown, which discussed soft tissue injuries. Shortly thereafter, the Supreme Court rendered its seminal opinion in Oswin v. Shaw, 129 N.J. 290 (1992), which set forth the standards for determining whether an injury satisfied the verbal threshold. See “History of the Verbal Threshold”, page S-3.
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