Rights of Drunk Driving Accident Victims in Arkansas

If a drunk driver hit you in Arkansas, you have rights that go well beyond whatever the criminal court does to the person who caused the crash. A DWI conviction punishes the driver. It does nothing to pay your medical bills or make up for your lost wages and the pain you're living with. That is a separate civil case, and Arkansas law gives you specific tools to bring it. This page sticks to what is true in Arkansas: the deadlines, the fault rules, the insurance you can reach, and the extra claims that exist only because the other driver was impaired.

You have three years, and the clock is already running

Arkansas sets a three-year deadline for personal injury lawsuits. It comes from Ark. Code Ann. § 16-56-105, which covers actions founded on liability, and Arkansas courts apply it to ordinary negligence claims because the state has no separate personal-injury limitations statute.¹ The three years run from the date of the crash, not from the day you finished treatment or the day the driver was convicted. Claims for damage to your vehicle and other property carry the same three-year window under the same statute.¹

A criminal DWI case against the driver does not pause or extend your civil deadline. The two run on separate tracks. If you wait for the criminal case to finish before looking into the civil side, you can burn a big part of your window. Miss the three years and a court will almost certainly dismiss the case no matter how obvious the drunk driver's fault was.

How Arkansas fault rules change what you collect

Arkansas uses modified comparative fault under Ark. Code Ann. § 16-64-122. A jury assigns each party a percentage of fault, and your damages drop by your share.² There is a hard cutoff. If your fault is equal to or greater than the fault of the party you are suing, you recover nothing.² Put simply, you can recover only if your share stays below 50 percent, and every point of fault the defense pins on you shrinks your award.

This matters more than people expect in drunk-driving cases. The impaired driver's insurer will often argue you were speeding, distracted, or somehow partly at fault, because shifting even a sliver of blame onto you lowers what they owe. A driver's intoxication is strong evidence of negligence, but it does not automatically settle what you were doing at the moment of impact. Keeping your own record of what happened is worth the effort.

Arkansas does not cap what you can recover

Some states put a ceiling on damages for pain and suffering. Arkansas does not. The Arkansas Constitution, article 5, section 32, bars the legislature from limiting the amount recovered for injury to a person or to property. When lawmakers passed a statutory cap on punitive damages, Ark. Code Ann. § 16-55-208, the Arkansas Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional in Bayer CropScience LP v. Schafer, 2011 Ark. 518.³ So both your compensatory damages and any punitive damages are legally uncapped in an ordinary car-crash case.

Compensatory recovery covers economic losses like medical bills and lost income, plus non-economic harm like pain and loss of a normal life. If your car lost market value even after a solid repair, that is a separate vehicle claim, covered on our page about diminished value in Arkansas.

Punitive damages against a drunk driver

Here is where a drunk-driving case parts ways with a routine fender bender. Arkansas allows punitive damages when a defendant's conduct crosses from ordinary carelessness into something worse. Under Ark. Code Ann. § 16-55-206, you can seek punitive damages if you prove, by clear and convincing evidence, that the driver knew or should have known the conduct would naturally and probably cause injury and kept going anyway with malice or in reckless disregard of the consequences.⁴ Driving drunk is the textbook example of reckless disregard, which is why punitive claims come up so often in DWI-related civil suits.

Punitive damages punish and deter, and they sit on top of whatever compensates you for your actual losses. Because the statutory cap was struck down, there is no dollar ceiling on them in Arkansas.³

Suing the bar or store that overserved

Arkansas law can sometimes reach past the driver to the business that supplied the alcohol, though the rule is narrow. Under Ark. Code Ann. § 16-126-104, a licensed retailer can be liable if it knowingly sold alcohol to someone who was clearly intoxicated, meaning so obviously drunk that the person was a clear danger to others.⁵ A jury decides whether that sale was a proximate cause of your injuries. The retailer has an affirmative defense if it reasonably believed the person was not clearly intoxicated or would not be driving.⁵ A separate section, Ark. Code Ann. § 16-126-103, covers sales to minors.⁶

Arkansas does not recognize social host liability for serving adult guests, so the neighbor who threw the party generally cannot be sued the way a bar can. Dram shop claims turn on the facts and move fast, because receipts, surveillance video, and server memories disappear quickly.

The insurance you can actually reach

Arkansas requires every driver to carry liability limits of at least 25/50/25 under Ark. Code Ann. § 27-22-104: $25,000 for bodily injury to one person, $50,000 per accident, and $25,000 for property damage.⁷ Those are floors, and drunk drivers are disproportionately likely to carry only the minimum, or nothing at all. When their coverage runs out before your bills do, you turn to your own policy.

Two Arkansas coverages help fill that gap. First, every auto policy must offer at least $5,000 per person in medical and hospital, income-disability, and death benefits, often called PIP or med-pay, for expenses incurred within 24 months of the crash, unless you rejected it in writing (Ark. Code Ann. § 23-89-202).⁸ It pays regardless of fault and can cover treatment right away. Second, insurers must offer uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, which you can also reject only in writing (Ark. Code Ann. §§ 23-89-403, 23-89-209).⁹¹⁰ Underinsured motorist coverage is exactly what you tap when a drunk driver's liability limits are too small to cover what they did to you. Read your own declarations page, because you may carry more protection than you think.

Documenting the crash and finding help

The official crash report is a core part of your file. You can order the Arkansas report through our Arkansas crash report page. Keep your medical records, photos, and any proof of lost income together from day one.

Because Arkansas does not cap damages and drunk-driving cases often involve punitive claims and more than one defendant, they can grow large and contested in a hurry. If you want someone in your corner, you can find an Arkansas attorney through our legal directory.

This article is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

1. Arkansas Code § 16-56-105 (actions with a three-year limitation). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-16/subtitle-5/chapter-56/subchapter-1/section-16-56-105/

2. Arkansas Code § 16-64-122 (comparative fault). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-16/subtitle-5/chapter-64/section-16-64-122/

3. Bayer CropScience LP v. Schafer, 2011 Ark. 518 (striking down the punitive-damages cap in Ark. Code Ann. § 16-55-208 under Ark. Const. art. 5, § 32). https://law.justia.com/cases/arkansas/supreme-court/2011/10-1246-0.html

4. Arkansas Code § 16-55-206 (standards for award of punitive damages). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-16/subtitle-5/chapter-55/subchapter-2/section-16-55-206/

5. Arkansas Code § 16-126-104 (civil liability for sale of alcohol to a clearly intoxicated person). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-16/subtitle-7/chapter-126/section-16-126-104/

6. Arkansas Code § 16-126-103 (civil liability for sale of alcohol to a minor). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-16/subtitle-7/chapter-126/section-16-126-103/

7. Arkansas Code § 27-22-104 (required minimum liability coverage). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-27/subtitle-2/chapter-22/subchapter-1/section-27-22-104/

8. Arkansas Code § 23-89-202 (required first-party coverage). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-23/subtitle-3/chapter-89/subchapter-2/section-23-89-202/

9. Arkansas Code § 23-89-403 (uninsured motorist coverage). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-23/subtitle-3/chapter-89/subchapter-4/section-23-89-403/

10. Arkansas Code § 23-89-209 (underinsured motorist coverage). https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-23/subtitle-3/chapter-89/subchapter-2/section-23-89-209/