Spooner Staggs Sponsors Free Online Resource for Oregon Motor-Vehicle Insurance Law
Spooner Staggs Trial Lawyers is proud to introduce onthepolicy.com, a free public resource created by firm partner David E. Smith. The website brings decades of Oregon motor-vehicle insurance statutes and legislative history together in one organized, searchable, advertising-free resource.
The site is available at no charge to injured people and their families, policyholders, plaintiffs’ and defense lawyers on both sides of insurance disputes, judges, law clerks, insurance professionals, regulators, legislators, researchers, journalists, and members of the public.
Making Oregon Insurance Law Easier to Research
Oregon law provides important protections for people injured in motor-vehicle collisions. onthepolicy.com focuses on the statutes governing:
- Uninsured motorist coverage, which may apply when the responsible driver has no insurance;
- Underinsured motorist coverage, which may apply when the responsible driver does not have enough insurance to cover the injuries and losses caused;
- Uninsured motorist property-damage coverage; and
- Personal injury protection, commonly known as PIP, which may cover certain medical expenses and other losses following a collision.
These laws can have significant consequences for people injured in car, truck, motorcycle, bicycle, pedestrian, and rideshare and delivery-vehicle (“gig-economy”) collisions. But finding the relevant statutes, and tracing how they have changed, has often required time-consuming research across multiple sources, visiting a law library, or conducting complex searches through numerous scanned statutes, session laws, and legislative records.
onthepolicy.com makes that information easier to find, follow, and understand.
More Than the Current Version of the Law
Most online legal resources show only the statute as it exists today. onthepolicy.com allows users to trace the development of Oregon’s motor-vehicle insurance laws over time.
For each statute, the site provides:
- The current statutory language;
- Prior versions dating back to the statute’s original enactment;
- A chronology showing when and how the Oregon Legislature amended the law; and
- Links to the session laws that enacted those changes.
Why the Statutory History Matters
The current language of a statute does not always provide the complete answer. An insurance dispute may depend on which version of the law was in effect at a particular time, how the Legislature revised the statute, or how the law developed through decades of amendments.
Until now, researching that history could require visiting a law library or searching through numerous scanned statutes, session laws, and legislative records. onthepolicy.com brings those materials together in one place and links directly to the original sources, allowing users to examine the underlying documents themselves.
Making this history easier to find and follow can support more informed legal analysis, better public-policy discussions, and a clearer understanding of the insurance protections Oregon law provides – and how those protections have changed over time.
A Resource for the Entire Oregon Community
Smith created onthepolicy.com to make an important and highly technical area of Oregon law more accessible, not only to lawyers but to everyone who may need to understand, interpret, apply, or evaluate it.
“We believe the law works best when people can find it, trace how it developed, and understand the protections it provides,” Smith said. “I created this resource to make that process easier for everyone.”
Spooner Staggs is proud of Dave’s work and pleased to help keep onthepolicy.com free to use and free of advertising. Our lawyers’ experience representing insurance companies – and now representing injured people and their families – has shown us how consequential these laws can be. Making the statutes and their history more accessible benefits everyone who must interpret, apply, or rely upon them.
Explore the free resource at onthepolicy.com.