Auto Insurance Settlement

[Branjor]

My father recently was in a car accident. He was broadsided by a guy who ran a red light and my father was assigned no blame at all in the accident as the one who hit him concurred with my father's version of it. My father is fine, thank heavens, but the car is a goner and I was shocked by the way insurance handled it. The first thing that happened was that my father's insurance company noted that he had no collision coverage and told him that because they would not be paying anything it was up to him to deal with the other driver's insurance company all on his own. The other insurance company sent an adjuster to look at the car and he decided it was "totalled", that is, the amount of money it would take to repair the car was greater than the book value of the car. So they are going to issue my father a check for $2750, the book value of his 1994 Buick Century. We asked someone to do an independent estimate for my dad on how much it would take to repair the car and that guy said it was not worth it to get it repaired. So now, after being in an accident in which someone else destroyed my dad's car and my dad was not to blame at all, he has no car and a check for $2750, not nearly enough to get another car with. So a big chunk of change will come out of my dad's pocket for another car. It seems to me that something is dreadfully wrong with this picture. Does anyone have any knowledge or expertise to offer us here? All this happened in New Jersey.

[Streetdoc270]

1. sadly,

Thats the way of life for insurance... I had a 1997 Hundai that I had only made 4 payments on when a lady pulled in front of me and totalled it, because the book value was less than the payoff I had to rollover 3k into my next vehicle. My advice is to be happy that your Dad was not hurt.


BTW welcome to DU!

[northernsoul]

3. but lawyers are the bad guys, not the insurance corps

or so the corporate media would have you believe

[graywarrior]

5. Not that this will help but

At least you can read up on what insurance companies are all about and how they manipulate ways not to pay. I'm waiting two years now for a settlement in a case were the other driver had no insurance and was at fault. I was driving a 2000 Subaru Forester. The adjuster did not total it, resulting in 5 months without a car so they could repair it. $17,000 in repairs and 5 months later, the car still did not run well. Now we're without a car and still no settlement in sight. The insurance company is claiming my injuries are from a previous accident 15 years ago. Insurance companies do not, I repeat, do not pay.

http://www.badfaithinsurance.org/

[Branjor]

7. Dang!

The other driver's insurance is Allstate - third on the list of bad faith non payers! I'm not surprised - and first on the list was Hartford - my father's insurance which abandoned him to dealing with Allstate all on his own!

[northernsoul]

2. talk to a lawyer

yep, one of those dadblammed ambulance chasers - these are the guys who actually know how to take on the insurance corporations and WIN. This sounds pretty fishy to me (without knowing all the details). A well-worded letter from an experienced attorney might get the insurance adjustors to <ahem> rethink their position.

Contact the New Jersy Bar Association and get their reccomendation for a reputable personal injury / property damage attorney in your area.

Word of warning: the dollar figures involved here may be so low as to make it hard to justify taking this to trial, but you should try to get a better settlement negotiated if possible.

Best of luck, and I'm glad that your Dad wasn't physically injured.

[Bunny]

4. Yes - talk to a lawyer.

He/she may be able to sue the other driver's insurance for damages of some sort.

[Streetdoc270]

6. prob won't help

I called one when I had the above incident and he told me that he coulden't help there as the laws are very exact about property damage. The Insurance company does not have to pay more than fair marked value for your vehicle. The only other thing that you can do is research in your area for other vehicles of the same make/model/accessories/milage as the one you lost and then present the figures to the Ins. company and see if they will give more

[bearfan454]

13. You are exactly right !

They will only pay fair market value. So, because of that you can call them up every year like I do and ask the exact dollar amount they will pay if your vehicle is totalled. When they tell you , you make your premium based on that amount ONLY, say you only want to insure the car for the amount they will pay off, not what they originally insured the car for. This has saved me and Mrs bearfan a lot of moolah.

[radwriter0555]

8. Nah don't talk to a lawyer, Since dad wasn't injured and there is little

insurance to collect from, there isn't anyone who will go to bat for him.

Since your dad didn't have the collision insurance, his insurance co won't step up either.

The money you were offered is all you're going to get.

[TreasonousBastard]

9. It's unfortunate that...

your father was not made whole, as far as getting a new car goes, but at least he wasn't hurt.

New Jersey has even worse laws for personal injury, and depending on this and that and "verbal threshold" and other things, he could have been really screwed.

Anyway, the purpose of tort laws, insurance, and the like is not to get a shiny new car out of the deal. The other guy destroyed a car worth $2,750. Some smart negotiating might have gotten a little more money, but if that's the value of the car, that's what he lost, and that's what he gets. Since he didn't have collision coverage, his own company had no obligation to him at all. No more than If the garage roof collapsed on it, a tree fell on it, or he drove it into the river.

Having spent a fair amount of time hanging out in used car lots over the past few months, I find it difficult to believe that he can't find another reasonably similar car for zunder 3 grand. Ten year old Buicks aren't exactly classics. Ten year old Buicks don't often even make it to the used car lots. I have seen, however, many 6 or 7 year old midsized cars for around that price.

FWIW, I was hit by a guy running a stop sign in Queens many years ago. The body shop worked with the adjuster to fix the car for a couple of hundred under its value. Otherwise, the body shop would have gotten a measly "adjustment fee" for the total loss instead of thousands for "fixing" it.

Not only did NY law say that any intersection accident is at least 10% the "innocent" driver's fault so I had to pay 10% of the bill, but I got a car back after two months that had a bent frame.

[Branjor]

10. Uh, say....

The part about the "shiny new car" was uncalled for. For something that was totally not his fault, he was left with no car at all and thus no means of transportation in a suburban location which has precious little by way of public transportation and in which a car is a NECESSITY, not a luxury. He will now have to pay a pretty penny to get another car that is merely decent and he is retired and on a fixed income, he's not rich. His ten year old Buick was a beautiful car and beautifully cared for (he had just spent $500 on repairing it and getting two new tires for it), not a piece of junk. To hear you tell it, you'd think he was just trying to cash in on this rotten situation not at all of his own making just to get a "shiny new car".
We're not bothered at all by his own insurance not paying him anything - we know what a lack of collision coverage means - it is just horrendous for a lay person to be left totally on his own to deal with a predatory insurance company like Allstate whose best interests lie in screwing him over.
We plan on going to a new car dealership and maybe trying to get a nice owner trade-in, which is what his Buick was and what my car is too.

[TreasonousBastard]

11. Perhaps it was, but...

he wasn't "screwed over."

He was given the value of what was destroyed. If it was more valuable to him, that is unfortunate.

You seem to believe that there is something wrong with the result of this incident. That it may not be to your liking does not mean that anything was wrong about it.

He was "screwed over" by the guy who ran the light. Insurance is not intended to right every wrong or correct every inconvenience.

[Branjor]

12. Actually...

I asked if anyone had any knowledge or expertise to offer, not for the opinion of some dude who hangs around in used car lots.

[SoCalDem]

14. If he has receipts for the tires and repairs, that could get him more

My truck was totalled a MONTH after I paid it off and put about $600.00 in repairs.. I just showed the receipts to State Farm, and they upped my settlement.. It still sucked that I lost my cute little truck, but at least they gave me more than blue book..

You might even have the repair place give you documentation on all that he has had done to it to prove that it was worth more..

It's worth a try :)

[Branjor]

16. I just want to say

Thank you to those of you who have tried to be of help. It does not look like a lawyer will do us much good as the law apparently says if the repairs come to more than the book value of the car, they only have to pay the smaller of the two amounts. However, we will be submitting the receipts for the repairs we just had done on the car and hopefully will get some back on that.
I am mostly just thankful that my father was not hurt, of course. Thanks for all the suggestions!

[TreasonousBastard]

15. Not only do I hang around in used car lots...

but I spent about 20 years as an underwriter and manager.

I am well aware of all the things insurance companies do that are less than honorable, to say the least, but I am also quite well aware of just how things are supposed to work.

The claim appears to have been handled properly. If it was not to your satisfaction, that is unfortunate, but there is simply no one to put any blame on for how things turned out.

Directing your anger at the insurance company may be therapeutic for a while, but it is misdirected.