The city claim may be hurt. Your UM claim may not be.

That's the first thing to get straight.

If you were hit in Farmington at an intersection where the traffic signal was malfunctioning, there may have been a claim against a government entity for the bad light. In New Mexico, claims against a city or other public body run under the Tort Claims Act, and the notice rules are brutal. Miss that notice window and the government side of the case can get strangled early.

But that does not automatically kill your uninsured/underinsured motorist claim under your own auto policy.

Those are different animals.

If the other driver blew through a dead or malfunctioning light near Main Street, Pinon Hills Boulevard, or one of those wide Farmington intersections where everybody assumes the other lane will stop, and that driver had no insurance or some joke of a minimum policy, UM/UIM coverage is usually where the real fight moves.

And in New Mexico, that matters a lot, because this state has a nasty uninsured-driver problem. A lot of people on the road are carrying nothing, or barely anything. That's not theory. That's daily life.

Why the missed notice deadline matters - and why it doesn't decide everything

The city-light issue is about whether a public entity can be sued for failing to maintain or repair a traffic signal, or for letting a dangerous condition sit there. That part depends on notice, timing, and whether the intersection falls under city, county, or state control. In Farmington, people assume "the city owns it" when sometimes the road is under a different agency. That mistake burns time fast.

If your lawyer is now saying the notice deadline already passed, the ugly question is whether anybody sat on the file too long, or misidentified who controlled the intersection.

But your UM/UIM carrier still has to deal with the uninsured driver who hit you.

That claim is based on this basic idea: if the at-fault driver had no usable coverage, your own insurer steps into the picture up to the UM/UIM limits you bought.

A broken light does not let the uninsured driver off the hook

Insurance companies love to act like a malfunctioning signal makes fault "unclear," so they can stall.

That's bullshit.

A dead light turns the intersection into a different traffic-control situation. Drivers still have duties. Slowing down, yielding, treating it properly when signals are dark or flashing wrong - that all still matters. The carrier may argue both drivers share blame, especially if the crash happened during heavy sun glare around dusk. That's a real New Mexico problem, especially on east-west roads when the light is right in your eyes and half the county decides to keep rolling anyway.

Comparative fault can reduce what gets paid. It doesn't erase the claim unless they can pin all of it on you.

If the other driver had nothing, look hard at stacking

This is where most people don't realize there may be more coverage on the table.

New Mexico is one of the states where stacking UM/UIM coverage can matter a lot, depending on how the policy was written and whether stacking was validly rejected. If you had more than one insured vehicle on the policy, or another household policy applies, there may be more than one layer of UM/UIM coverage.

What to look for:

• every vehicle on your auto policy, any separate household auto policies, whether UM/UIM was rejected in writing, and whether the policy language actually limits stacking the way the insurer claims

That matters because a bartender in Farmington who misses weeks of work, loses tips, and is already dealing with a service-connected VA disability can burn through one small policy limit fast. ER bills, imaging, follow-up care, meds, lost income - gone.

Hit-and-run with no plate? UM still may apply

If the driver took off and nobody got a plate, this can still fall into UM territory, but the insurer will demand proof the crash happened the way you say it did. At a malfunctioning intersection, that means the traffic-signal issue, witness statements, 911 logs, officer notes, city repair records, and photos become a huge deal.

The carrier will absolutely try to treat a no-plate crash like a phantom story unless the paper trail is solid.

VA benefits and a personal injury claim are not the same pot of money

If you're a veteran with a service-connected disability rating, the crash does not wipe out your VA benefits.

The bigger concern is whether crash-related treatment was paid by the VA or another federal program, and whether reimbursement rights come into play if you recover money from the auto claim. That is a separate issue from your disability compensation rating. Your monthly service-connected benefits are not some free target for the insurance company to offset because you got hurt in civilian traffic.

And no, the UM carrier doesn't get to shrug off your injuries by saying, "You were already disabled."

They'll try. Especially if you already had back, neck, shoulder, or mobility problems documented through the VA. But New Mexico law doesn't give them a pass just because you were medically vulnerable before the wreck. If the crash aggravated a preexisting condition, that aggravation still counts.

If your own side is acting vague about stacking, treating the missed government deadline like the end of the world, or waving away the VA piece with "don't worry about it," that's when people should start asking much sharper questions about whose problem is really being protected.