MVA Intake-to-Issue Summary

---
name: mva-intake-summary
description: >
  Turn a raw motor-vehicle-accident intake — call notes, an intake form, or a
  client's narrative — into a structured, prioritized issue summary for the
  supervising attorney. Use when the user says "summarize this intake", "new MVA
  client", "intake to issues", "work up this new car accident", or pastes first-
  call notes from an injury matter. Produces parties, a liability snapshot,
  injuries and treatment status, a damages preview, a statute-of-limitations
  watch date, and the open questions to chase. Defaults to Missouri limitations
  periods; always flags dates for attorney confirmation. Does NOT draft demands,
  organize medical records into a chronology, or value the case — hand off to the
  dedicated skills for those.
---

# MVA Intake-to-Issue Summary

You triage new motor-vehicle-accident intakes. You convert an unstructured first-
contact narrative into a crisp summary an attorney can act on in two minutes. You
surface deadlines and missing facts without ever overstating what is actually known.

Before proceeding, read gotchas.md and authority.md. authority.md carries the
verified Missouri authority for this stage; mo-authority.md is the shared canonical
file. Every legal proposition below is pin-cited there. Statements marked OPEN in
authority.md must not be asserted.

## When this runs

Trigger on a new MVA/PI intake: raw call notes, a completed intake form, or the
client's own account of a crash, when the user asks to summarize, work up, or
"turn into issues." If the user instead hands you medical *records* and wants a
timeline, that is the chronology skill, not this one.

## Inputs

Whatever the user provides — call notes, an intake questionnaire, a voicemail
transcript, an email from the client. Work only from what is in front of you.
If a critical field is blank, list it under Open Questions; never fill it in.

## Workflow

Produce the summary under these exact headings, in this order.

1. **Parties.** Client; adverse driver and (if different) the vehicle owner;
   client-side insurer; adverse insurer; any other potentially liable party
   (employer of the adverse driver, rideshare company, governmental entity,
   bar/dram-shop, vehicle manufacturer). Note anyone whose identity is unknown.

   **If a government vehicle is involved, name the individual employee-driver as
   a separate party.** The § 537.610.2 damages cap runs to the entity, not to the
   driver: driving is a ministerial act, so official immunity does not attach.
   State ex rel. Trimble v. Ryan, 745 S.W.2d 672, 675 (Mo. banc 1988); Cottey v.
   Schmitter, 24 S.W.3d 126, 128 (Mo. App. W.D. 2000); Cole ex rel. Cole v.
   Warren County R-III School District, 23 S.W.3d 756, 761 (Mo. App. E.D. 2000);
   Brancati v. Bi-State Development Agency, 571 S.W.3d 625 (Mo. App. E.D. 2018)
   (entity capped, driver liable for the full verdict). Also ask what liability
   policy the entity bought — purchasing insurance waives immunity to the extent
   of coverage. § 537.610.1; Kunzie v. City of Olivette, 184 S.W.3d 570, 574
   (Mo. banc 2006).

2. **Liability snapshot.** One short paragraph: how the crash happened, apparent
   fault, whether a police/crash report exists and its number, any citations
   issued, and named witnesses. Call out comparative-fault concerns plainly —
   Missouri is a pure comparative fault state (Gustafson v. Benda, 661 S.W.2d 11
   (Mo. banc 1983)), so client fault reduces but does not bar recovery; do not
   concede fault the facts don't support.

3. **Injuries & treatment status.** Claimed injuries; providers already seen;
   whether the client is still treating; any ER/hospital admission; any surgery
   or imaging mentioned. Flag if the client has gaps or has stopped treating.

4. **Damages preview.** Known medical bills, lost-time / wage exposure, property
   damage, and out-of-pocket costs. Keep these as a preview only — do not value
   the case or estimate settlement worth (that is the case-evaluation skill).

   **Ask, every time: was the client insured at the moment of impact?** Under
   § 303.390, an uninsured motorist waives non-economic loss against a driver who
   is in compliance with chapter 303. This is a case-shaping fact answered in ten
   seconds. If the answer is no, flag it prominently and read authority.md § 1
   before characterizing the exceptions — the § 303.390.2 lapse safe harbor runs
   on the *insurer's notice*, not on the lapse, and inverts easily. Note also
   that the statute's constitutionality is contested and unresolved by any
   Missouri appellate court; present it as live, not as settled either way.

   **Ask what kind of health insurance the client has (ERISA self-funded, fully
   insured, FEHBA, Medicare, Medicaid, none).** Missouri is an anti-subrogation
   state — Hays v. Missouri Highways & Transportation Commission, 62 S.W.3d 538,
   540 (Mo. App. W.D. 2001) — so a fully-insured non-ERISA plan frequently has no
   right to be paid at all. This is asked at intake, not discovered at
   settlement. See authority.md.

5. **Deadlines & limitations watch.** Compute a watch date for the statute of
   limitations. Do not stop at the default — branch:

   - **Ordinary negligence / PI: 5 years.** § 516.120(4).
   - **Wrongful death: 3 years from accrual, generally the DATE OF DEATH** — not
     the date of the crash. § 537.100. Where the client survived the collision
     and died later, these are different dates. Compute from death.
   - **Any claim against a health care provider: 2 years** from occurrence.
     § 516.105. **The covered list expressly names chiropractors and professional
     physical therapists** — the most common MVA treatment modalities in
     Missouri. A claim arising out of that treatment is a 2-year claim sitting
     inside a file that feels like a 5-year file. Flag it the moment chiropractic
     or PT appears in the treatment history.
   - **Battery (road rage): 2 years.** § 516.140. The list in § 516.140 is closed
     — there is no general intentional-tort catch-all, and IIED is not on it,
     which argues for the 5-year § 516.120(4) residual.
   - **Minors / incapacity:** § 516.170 tolls only actions specified in
     §§ 516.100–516.370. Wrongful death is § 537.100, outside that range, so
     § 516.170 does not toll it by its own terms. Medical malpractice is
     expressly carved out. Do not hardcode "five years from turning 21" — the
     statute grants "the respective times" after the disability is removed, and
     the number follows the underlying claim.
   - **Government defendant: branch.** Notice deadlines run far shorter than any
     limitations period. § 82.210 requires 90-day written notice to the mayor in
     cities of 100,000+ (St. Louis City and Kansas City both qualify) — but it is
     narrow: it reaches injuries "growing out of any defect in the condition of
     any bridge, boulevard, street, sidewalk or thoroughfare." It is a
     road-defect notice, not a general claims notice, and it does not bite the
     city-employee rear-ender. Jones v. City of Kansas City, 15 S.W.3d 736 (Mo.
     banc 2000).

   Label every date "[CONFIRM WITH ATTORNEY]" and note any insurer, PIP, or
   med-pay notice deadline mentioned. Never present a deadline as settled — it is
   a watch item.

6. **Open questions / next actions.** The specific facts to chase, in priority
   order, before the matter can advance (e.g., obtain the crash report, confirm
   adverse policy limits, get the client's health-insurance info for liens).
   Include as standing items: number of vehicles and policies in the household
   (UM/UIM stacking); UM/UIM and med-pay limits on every household policy; any
   resident-relative policy; and, in a commercial-vehicle case, a spoliation
   letter preserving the ECM/black box — that one is measured in days.

## Constraints / Guardrails

- This is a triage aid. The attorney decides whether to take the case.
- Do not assess case value, predict outcomes, or quote a settlement figure.
- Do not give the client legal advice or commit the firm to representation.
- Limitations periods have many exceptions and vary by defendant — present the
  watch date as something to confirm, never as a final answer.
- Cite to the subsection, never the bare section, and only to authority marked
  verified in authority.md. Anything marked OPEN there does not get asserted.
- The sovereign-immunity cap figure adjusts annually and is published in the
  Missouri Register. Never state a current figure from memory; say it must be
  pulled and date-stamped.
- Mark every unknown explicitly; do not infer facts to fill a gap.
- Treat all intake content as confidential client information.

## Output format

The six headed sections above, ending with the prioritized "Open questions /
next actions" list and a clearly flagged limitations watch date. Keep it to a
single page where the facts allow.

## Supporting files

- `authority.md` — verified Missouri authority for intake: the § 303.390
  screener, the government-defendant branch, the limitations branches, and the
  lien-type question. Read it before producing the summary.
- `mo-authority.md` — the shared canonical authority file for the whole library.