The Acura MDX auto property loss claim hasn’t made much progress, sadly. I called the adjuster to say that her breakdown is not really important to us. I did not get through to her, and she did not call back. The reason that her breakdown is not important to us is that a court is not bound by the insurance company’s policy on what to pay for a diminished value recovery. If that were true, there would be no need for courts. The court is bound by the Pennsylvania diminished value claims law and in this case that means if the defendant has conceded liability, we can claim any damage we can prove, regardless of what the insurance company wants to pay. So, if they offer $1,000.00 based on their procedures, and we can prove $10,000.00 in damage, we are very likely to get a lot more than they offer. We can prove our loss by a dealer estimate, an appraisal or an actual sale of the vehicle. Probably the best is an actual sale, because the best was to establish the market value of property is an actual transaction on the open market. In this case we have a trade in, as the owner didn’t want to wait for the case to be resolved before getting a new car. This case is likely to be a contest over competing valuations, but the actual transaction will probably be more persuasive than an internal valuation by the insurance company for many reasons. Among them, the insurance company didn’t inspect the actual car, they just used some internal method to make an offer, and the insurance company has an obvious bias, i.e. the less they pay the more they keep for themselves. That cannot be said by the dealer who took the car in trade. The dealer has an interest in making money, but they do not have an interest in overstating or understating the value of the trade in car. Instead, they have an interest in being as accurate as they can because of market pressures. We’ll see if the adjuster is reasonable.

Getting Paid on an auto diminished value claim

Vic’s auto diminished value claim has been concluded – mostly. If you’ve been following these posts you know that we’ve been working on a small auto accident property damage claim that we won in court, and the insurance company lost and then appealed. They missed some deadlines, and made other mistakes, so we filed papers in court to strike the appeal. The insurance company tried 4 times to get the appeal reinstated, and each time violated local court rules so the judge never made a ruling. He just filed an order that the reinstatement would not be considered until the insurance company followed the correct procedure. Finally, this week, we got an order that the reinstatement was denied. Then next day, the insurance company called to ask where to send the check for the full amount of the auto property damage, plus court costs from the small claims court. Furthermore, we incurred some costs during the appeal, and the insurance company has not indicated whether they will pay the additional costs.
This claim originally started in the summer of 2011, and here it is April of 2012 and the payment is not here yet. Diminution of value claims like this are not always for the do it yourself claimant.
Another example is the case I first wrote about on 3/31/12. The client has a car accident property damage claim for $10,000.00 and the insurance agent for the at-fault driver has offered roughly 10% as a settlement. We rejected it and sent the claims adjuster the written car damage estimates, the actual trade in documents from the damaged vehicle, and the Pennsylvania diminished value law that is in our favor. The adjuster again sent forms for us to sign to accept the low ball offer. Then, the adjuster sent a letter stating that they would send a breakdown of their offer. This is not uncommon. Insurance companies are in business to make money, and they do that by paying as little as possible to victims. The next step will be to try to talk to the claims manager or supervisor to persuade them they’re going to lose this one.