State Farm tried to stick me with a $1.2M medical bill after a hit and run driver killed my brother because their UM/UIM 'anti-stacking' clause supposedly limited recovery to a single $100k policy. Won stacking on three vehicles in Pennsylvania after citing the 75 Pa.C.S. § 1738 waiver requirements and Craley v. State Farm. Walking through the policy language and the statute

Posting this because UM/UIM stacking is one of the most contested issues in auto insurance and the recovery difference can be enormous when the at-fault driver is uninsured or underinsured. Background: my younger brother was killed in November 2025 in a hit and run on I-83 outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The at-fault driver fled the scene and was never identified, which under Pennsylvania law converts the claim into a UM (uninsured motorist) claim against the available UM policies on vehicles in the household. Total medical and funeral costs were $1.2M including 11 days of ICU care before he was declared brain dead. He was 28, single, no children, lived at home with our parents who carry State Farm auto insurance on three vehicles: their 2022 SUV, their 2019 sedan, and his 2020 truck which was the vehicle he was driving at the time of the crash. Each vehicle carried $100,000 UM coverage limits.

State Farm's initial position was that the available UM coverage was limited to the single $100,000 policy on the vehicle he was driving, citing the "anti-stacking" clause in the policy that purported to limit recovery to "the highest applicable limit of liability" across all covered vehicles in the household rather than the sum of all available limits. Our position was that under Pennsylvania law UM/UIM stacking is the default and stacking can only be waived if the insurer obtained a properly executed written waiver complying with 75 Pa.C.S. § 1738(b) at the time the policy was first issued and at each subsequent renewal where stacking limits were modified. State Farm produced an old 2018 stacking waiver form signed by my father when the original policy was issued but could not produce a current waiver matching the present policy structure with all three vehicles.

The Pennsylvania stacking statute (75 Pa.C.S. § 1738) is one of the most policyholder-friendly stacking frameworks in the country. Stacking is the default rule. The insurer must obtain a written waiver in a specific statutory form, signed by the named insured, in order to opt out of stacking. The waiver requirements were strengthened by Craley v. State Farm (Pa. Super. 2007) and subsequent cases which held that the waiver must be re-executed when there is a material change in the policy (adding or removing vehicles, changing coverage limits) and that an old waiver does not carry forward across material policy changes. State Farm had added my brother's truck to the policy in 2020 without obtaining a fresh stacking waiver. That single fact was dispositive.

The appeal went through three rounds. State Farm's first denial cited the 2018 waiver as binding across all subsequent policy changes. We responded with a citation to Craley and a demand for the waiver matching the present policy structure. State Farm's second denial argued that the truck was a "replacement vehicle" not subject to fresh waiver requirements. We responded with the policy add-on documentation showing the truck was added as an additional vehicle not a replacement, plus a citation to Sackett v. Nationwide (Pa. Super. 2010) holding that added vehicles require fresh waivers. State Farm conceded stacking and paid the full $300,000 combined UM limit across the three vehicles 14 weeks after the initial claim. The recovery difference between the unstacked $100k position and the stacked $300k recovery was the entire reason the family was able to cover the medical and funeral costs without going into bankruptcy. The lesson is that UM/UIM stacking waivers are constantly invalid because carriers fail to re-execute them at policy changes, and stacking is worth fighting for in every UM/UIM claim where multiple household vehicles are insured.