Fort Wayne Hit and Run Accident Lawyer

If a driver hit you in Fort Wayne and then drove off, the claim does not leave with them. This page is for the person who was left at the scene, and for the family of someone who did not survive it. It covers what the law required that driver to do, what a conviction does for your case, and who pays when they are never found. Blackburn Romey handles hit and run claims across Indiana.

Why Fort Wayne Families Call Blackburn Romey After a Hit and Run

Personal injury and wrongful death law is all we do. A hit and run splits in two from the first day. There is the injury claim, which may run against your own insurer rather than the driver’s. There is also the criminal case, which can hand your claim evidence it would otherwise have to build.

Chris Blackburn has trial experience in Allen County, which is where a Fort Wayne claim would be tried. He passed the bar in February 2011 in Indiana and began his law career that May.

A Fort Wayne hit and run sits inside our Fort Wayne personal injury practice, and we handle these claims in Allen County. A first conversation shows which track your case is on.

What Indiana Law Required the Driver Who Hit You to Do

IC 9-26-1-1.1 required the driver who hit you to stop immediately, at the scene or as close to it as possible, in a way that does not obstruct traffic more than is necessary. It then required them to remain there until they had given their name and address and the registration number of the vehicle they were driving to any person involved, and shown their driver’s license to any person involved, to an occupant of a vehicle involved, or to anyone attending to one.

Because someone was hurt, it also required them to provide reasonable assistance to each person injured in or entrapped by the accident, as directed by a law enforcement officer, medical personnel or a 911 operator. And it required them, as soon as possible after the accident, to give notice of it, or ensure another person gives notice, by the quickest means of communication. That notice goes to the local police if it happened inside a municipality, to the sheriff or nearest state police post if it happened outside one, or to a 911 operator.

Was the Driver Ever Allowed to Move Their Vehicle?

IC 9-26-1-1.2 carries the one narrow exception to that stop duty, and on a crash like yours it does not help the driver. Where a vehicle comes to a stop in the traveled portion of a highway, the driver has to move it off the traveled portion, as soon as safely possible, to a place as close to the accident as possible. But that duty reverses where the accident involved the transportation of hazardous materials, or where it resulted in injury or death or trapped someone in a vehicle: in those cases the driver must not move the vehicle at all. Not moving the vehicle when that duty does apply is a Class C infraction, which is not a crime and carries a money judgment of up to $500 rather than any jail time.

And moving it changes nothing else. The duties to give information, to provide assistance and to notify the owner of a damaged vehicle or property all still applied, and failing to meet them knowingly or intentionally is still leaving the scene of an accident, carrying the same penalties.

When Does the Driver’s Conviction Help Your Civil Case?

A driver who knowingly or intentionally fails to do those things commits leaving the scene of an accident, a crime in its own right, and its grade decides whether a conviction helps your claim:

• a Class B misdemeanor as the baseline;
• a Class A misdemeanor when someone suffered bodily injury;
• a Level 6 felony when the injury was moderate or serious, or the driver had a qualifying prior conviction within five years;
• a Level 4 felony when someone died or suffered catastrophic injury;
• a Level 3 felony when the driver fled during or after drunk driving that caused serious bodily injury, death or catastrophic injury.

IC 35-50-2-7 puts a Level 6 felony at between six months and two and a half years. A felony conviction is therefore the level at which the driver’s guilty judgment can generally be used as evidence in your civil case. IC 34-39-3-1 lets the conviction in to prove the facts it rested on, and that rule reaches only crimes punishable by more than a year. This rule does not reach a Class A misdemeanor, which carries not more than one year.

A court does have a discretionary power to enter judgment on a Level 6 felony as a Class A misdemeanor instead, which would put the conviction below that threshold — but it is not a given. The statute bars the court from using it in the cases it lists, including where the driver already had an unrelated felony entered as a Class A misdemeanor less than three years before, and where a court does use it, it has to record its reasons in detail.

How Often Do Hit-and-Run Crashes Happen in Allen County?

If it feels like this happens a lot here, it does. Roughly one in five Allen County collisions involved a driver who left. That matters to you for a practical reason rather than a comforting one: a hit and run is a common enough claim here that nothing about yours will be unfamiliar to the insurer you end up dealing with. Indiana Crash Facts 2024 puts the county rate at 19.4% in 2024, one of the three highest in the state alongside Marion at 21.9% and Lake at 19.2%, against a mean county percentage of 8%.

For scale, across Indiana counties in 2024 there were 26,804 hit-and-run collisions, 13% of all collisions in those counties, and Allen County recorded 12,878 collisions of every kind that year, the third-highest total of Indiana’s 92 counties. What none of those numbers settles is the question your own claim turns on. Of the Fort Wayne car accident claims we handle, the hit and run is the one where the first thing to establish is which policy responds, and that is where a first conversation starts.

What to Do in the First Days After a Fort Wayne Hit and Run

Our guide to what to do in a hit and run sets out the immediate steps. What follows are the points on this page that bear on your own paperwork and your own dates.

If the driver is identified later, get their name and address. IC 27-7-5-3 requires a claim for property damage under uninsured motorist coverage to include the name and address of the at-fault operator and any other information to establish the at-fault operator is without motor vehicle liability insurance. Your later claim for the car needs all of that.

IC 34-11-2-4 gives you two years from when your claim arises to file an injury lawsuit. For most crash injuries that means two years from the day of the crash. That is the deadline for a lawsuit against another driver, and it is not the first deadline every claim faces.

What Changes If a Government Vehicle or a Road Authority Was Involved?

The two years is not the first deadline where a government defendant is involved. Where an injury claim is a tort claim against a governmental defendant under Indiana’s Tort Claims Act, notice comes first: a claim against a political subdivision (a county, township, city, town, school corporation, state educational institution, city or county hospital, or another entity in the definition at IC 34-6-2.1-155) is barred unless notice is filed with its governing body (and, in the cases the statute specifies, with the Indiana political subdivision risk management commission) within 180 days after the loss occurs (IC 34-13-3-8), and a claim against the state is barred unless notice is filed with the attorney general or the state agency involved within 270 days after the loss occurs (IC 34-13-3-6).

The notice must be in writing and delivered in person or by registered or certified mail. Both windows are far shorter than the two-year lawsuit deadline, and the Act has narrow exceptions of its own — so if any government body may be involved, speak to a lawyer well before the notice window closes, and do not assume a missed window has ended the claim without asking.

Who Pays When the Driver Is Never Found?

When the driver is never identified, the claim turns toward your own uninsured motorist coverage, and Indiana treats your injuries and your car differently.

IC 27-7-5-2 puts two separate duties on an insurer. On an ordinary Indiana auto liability policy, the insurer must make available uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage; umbrella and excess policies are treated differently. Separately from that, the coverage must be provided in limits at least equal to the bodily injury liability limits of the insured’s own policy, unless the insured rejected the coverage in writing. And underinsured motorist coverage may never be sold or provided below $50,000.

That floor governs what an insurer must make available and may not sell below. It does not mean every Indiana driver carries that much underinsured motorist coverage, because someone who rejected it in writing has none.

The split matters. For your injuries, the question is what your own policy says. Whether an unidentified driver counts as “uninsured” turns on that wording, because Indiana’s definition of an uninsured motor vehicle is expressly subject to the terms and conditions of that coverage.

For damage to your car the statute is harder. IC 27-7-5-3 requires a property damage claim under uninsured motorist coverage to give the name and address of the at-fault operator and any other information to establish the at-fault operator is without motor vehicle liability insurance. And no liability is imposed on the insurer where the owner or operator of the other vehicle cannot be identified. That bar is the property damage rule, not the injury rule, and it does not speak to collision coverage on your policy. We handle those claims as part of our car accident practice, with your insurer as the counterpart.

What Your Own Share of the Fault Does to the Claim

Your own share of the fault changes what you recover, and in one kind of claim it is not weighed at all. Indiana compares fault in a claim against another driver, but not in a tort claim against a governmental entity or a public employee under Indiana’s Tort Claims Act, where the comparative fault chapter does not apply at all (IC 34-51-2-2). Where it does apply, your own share of fault reduces what you recover (IC 34-51-2-5), and only a share greater than everyone else’s combined bars the claim entirely (IC 34-51-2-6). So two questions decide what a Fort Wayne hit and run claim is worth: which policy responds, and how the fault is divided.

If a Fort Wayne Hit and Run Killed Someone in Your Family, Who Brings the Claim?

Indiana answers that differently depending on who died. “Child” is a narrow word here, and it takes three things at once. The person who died has to have been unmarried, without dependents, and either under twenty, or under twenty-three and enrolled in a postsecondary institution or in a career or technical program that is not a postsecondary program.

Where the person who died was not a child as Indiana defines one: the wrongful death lawsuit is brought by the personal representative of the person who died, and that action has to be filed within two years.

Where the person who died was a child as Indiana defines one, IC 34-23-2-1 sets out who may bring the claim. The action may be maintained by the father and mother jointly. Either of them may maintain it alone by naming the other parent as a codefendant to answer as to his or her interest. After a divorce or dissolution of marriage, it may be maintained by the person to whom custody of the child was awarded. It may also be maintained by a guardian, for a protected person. If the person who was awarded custody has since died, a personal representative is appointed to maintain the action.

A child’s claim is not one to leave sitting: Indiana’s two-year injury deadline is the one to work to, so ask a lawyer about your own dates rather than assuming you have longer. And as above, where the claim is against a governmental defendant the Tort Claims Act notice window comes first and is much shorter than either two-year deadline, so that is the date to work to in those cases.

Frequently Asked Questions About Fort Wayne Hit and Run Claims

Talk to a Fort Wayne Hit and Run Accident Lawyer

If a driver left you at the scene in Fort Wayne, a free confidential consultation is the place to start: we will look at what happened and give you a straight answer about whether there is a claim worth bringing. Bring whatever you already have: the police report number, photographs of the scene and of your vehicle, the name of your own insurer, and your medical records so far.

And if a government vehicle, a city or county road authority, or another public body may have been involved, say so at the outset. As above, the Tort Claims Act notice window in those cases is much shorter than the deadline for filing a lawsuit.

Blackburn Romey handles hit and run claims in Allen County. Call 833-366-6595 or contact us.