FWIW...
I had Progressive insurance on an almost new motorcycle that was involved in a relatively minor accident. The person from progressive that did the estimate had no background or detailed information about what the specific repair costs would be. The only parts available would have to be OEM from the dealer, but the estimator assumed that a generic fender would cost about $100. (Retail for a replacement fender was around $500.) The total estimate was around $700, but the only place it could be repaired properly (the dealer) said that the actual cost would be $2500. The dealer worked directly with Progressive and, in the end, they had to pay the *actual* cost of repair (vs. their original estimate).

As for injury... I was in an original VW bug that was rear-ended many years ago. There were no head restraints, so my head got whiplashed pretty good. I saw a doc. and felt fine after a couple of days, so I signed-off. A couple of weeks later I moved in a way that tweaked my neck and made it painful again. I continued to have pain that would last from several days to a few weeks, off-and-on for years. Its been several years since its caused me pain, but now it snaps, crackles, and pops frequently when I move my head. Don't be too quick to sign-off on this. Keep the case open until you've gone several weeks, or even a couple of months without any additional problems.

 

Ok I am going to be the first person to stand up and say something smells fishy here.

1.) Rear ended at 55+ MPH
2.) Adjuster only allowing for $5K in damages
3.) Insurance company of the person not at fault wants to pay for damages
4.) Your family lawyer has washed his hands of this situation and will not help refer you to someone else. (I am making a leap of faith that if he truly wasn't qualified to handle this case but thought it was winnable he most certainly would have passed a few names along.)

These four things do not add up. There is a piece of the puzzle missing.

 

Where to start - The property damage: Attorney's that handle personal injury cases make their money on contingency, they get a cut of whatever they collect. This does not work with the property damage - if there is $5,000 worth of damage and the attorney takes 33%, that leaves only $3,333 to repair $5,000 worth of damage. See the problem? Now, if you are making an injury claim the attorney will obtain a settlement and take a cut of that - and handle the property damage issue as a courtesy for that 33% of the injury claim.

Repair vs. Total: Depending on your state, there is a threshold of when a vehicle is declared a total loss. If the damages exceed a certain percentage of the value of the vehicle - the threshold, 75%, 80%, etc, - then the vehicle is a total loss. If the damage does not exceed the threshold, it is repairable. If it is repairable, once the repairs are complete you can then make a claim for diminishment of value.

Repair shops: Find the local BMW/MINI dealer and find out who they use - who in your area specializes in BMW/MINI's. Take your car there and have the shop deal direct with the insurance company. If they know their stuff, the car should be just as good as before the accident. MINI's, like most vehicles today, are unibody construction - there is no "frame" to bend. However, the sheer fact it was in an accident will reduce it's value, thus the diminished value mentioned above.

If it's a total loss: You will not get $35k for your MINI. By putting all of those "upgrades" on your car you have limited its appeal to certain buyers and narrowed the market of customers. It should not negatively impact the value, but if there is any increase in value it would be nominal. Your best bet would be to take all the upgrades off and put it back to stock - if it were totalled and if the stuff was really that expensive.

Doctor vs. Chiro: This is not a slam against anyone, this is just how it is. In the eyes of insurance companies - the entity that will be writing the settlement check - a chiro does not carry the same weight as an MD. This is not a slam as I have several friends who are chiro's, many of whom are substantially more knowledgeable about physiology than many area MD's. This is the plain and simple truth from someone who has been in the business for 17 years. A medical report with an impairment rating from an MD will result in a larger settlement than a report with the identical impairment rating from a chiro. And you can take that to the bank. If a chiro offers you relief of your symptoms, great. But, you need to see an MD, period.

I rest my case.

 

that is the first thing came to my mind. It is amazing how ppl try to take advantage of the situations. It is an opportunity to send somebody to cleaners whereas it should be considered an unfortunate event. It is a 2 years old Mini, $25K brand new, and he is trying to settle $35K? .

I don't know, something does not make sense here. BTW, I am truely sorry for the damages and your wasted time with this BS. Hope you get better and get your car recovered. The only thing i would suggest is to pull your car to a high end body shop that workds on Porsches, Ferraris whatever, and get a good estimate from them. Tell them that the car needs to be fixed professionally, and trust me they will take care of the rest...

 

Totally agree with you.

Just refer to the Yellow Pages for a lawyer. There are lots of ambulance chasers there!

 

The $35k sounds perfectably reasonable to me. He is trying to get back to where he was before the accident, that is all, and that is the point of lawsuits. Yes if he was trying to sell the car, he would not get the original 32k he spent, but if he wanted that exact same car again, he would still be spending just as much. Add in the time he missed from work and that should be right around the 35k mark.

If you crash your car, you shouldn't get the price you could sell it for, you should be getting the price it would cost to buy that car again. Since finding a car modded exactly like yours is practically impossibe, the mods should be calculated at fmv....

But anyways, I don't really know what I'm talking about other then like one law class.

 

You are paying your insurance company to work for you! Do not deal with the guilty party's insurance company; when they call you, refer them to the person at your insurer who is working your case. They will subrogate against the insurer of the guilty party.

Your mods are not insured unless you told your insurer about them and they adjusted the premium to cover them. They are insuring it based on the configuration associated with the VIN. Anything not on the car when it was originally sold is probably not covered.

I recommend having the MINI dealer do the repair work (yes, they'll probably sub it out, but to someone who knows MINIs). The repair work will ALWAYS cost more than the original estimate--maybe MUCH more. I once had an insurance adjuster tell me my dented bumper (parking lot incident) would not cost much more than my deductable to fix so I should have it done myself so it wouldn't affect my insurance and wouldn't result in a CarFax report--the actual repair was almost five times what they originally said because once they got the dented bumper off they realized how much more needed to be replaced.

Also, insurers are covering the "present value" of your car, not what you paid for it. The exception to that would be "declared value" policies which are usually issued for collector cars.

Good luck!

 

I agree

Wrong, what it is worth is what the market is willing to pay. and Mods diminish the value of your car....If you mod you ought to know by now you do so at your own risk, and are diminishing its value

As someone mentioned earlier you must have a rider if you want to cover customizations. That way they can charge you higher premiums for the increased value they are supposed to cover. If blow 7-8k on mods and dont bother to tell your insurance then they are under NO obligation to pay it

 

What he said and to reinforce it. ...

Your insurance company is acting on your behalf, not against you. Your insurance company has the lawyers that are part of the subrogation process. ...its part of the reason why you pay them premiums. I would let them do their job.

Check your policy very carefully. Mine clearly said that any mods valued more than $500 require a rider. Dont set yourself up for dissapointment when they dont cover your brake pads that you chose to add ... you didnt have to. etc.

Unless your very lucky, there is just no way your going to get back much of anything less than the depreciation of the original VIN equipment (without a rider)... Why? because if you add say $23K of equipment to your car but your insurnace company is insuring it for $23K, then that is what you going to be covered for ...

I hope this works out for you because its not your fault and is sad ... but you cant realisitical expect the insurance to cover for costs that you are not paying for on your premium.

 

There is some misinformation in the above post:

I don't know of ANY attorney that would take a cup of the Property damage portion of a case...the firms I work for NEVER do. It doesn't make sense.

Attorneys make money on the damages portion of your injury case...they figure out your compensatory damages based on the nature and extent of your injuries.

The claim you make on the other party's insurance companyafter selling your repaired car, and taking a loss is called a Diminution of value claim...not diminished value claim.

You CAN get credit for most of your mods by providing receipts for each mod. Keep in mind that the longer the mod has been on the car...the less it is going to be worth.

Doctor v. Chiro? Depends on your injuries...Doctors don't treat soft tissue injuries that well, therefore there is not much documentation of your injury. No documentation = no injury in an insurance adjuster's eyes.

 

Subrogation is when an insurance company tries to get it's money back from the at-fault party's policy, or if not policy existed from the party themself.

Don't be fooled into thinking that your insurance company has a duty to be proactive in pursuing a claim against the other party for your own damages that are not covered by your own policy. The typical subro claim is the amount of your collision claim with your own company.

Your insurance company is there to DEFEND you if you cause an accident. They are not there to be PROACTIVE for you when you are injured by someone else's negligence.

 

Yes you can recover damages for both portions of your claim, but you need to define damages as it pertains to both the injury and PD claim.

The damages recovered for the property portion of your claim are either the cost of repairing the property plus reasonable loss of use, or the fair market value of an item that cannot be repaired plus reasonable loss of use.

The injury portion is where an attorney becomes most useful. This is where you can recover economic, compensatory (pain and suffering) and sometimes punitive damages.

I agree that if you are looking to get an attorney to represent you, they should handle the ENTIRE claim.

 

Clearly subrogation is a term of art--I'll let the lawyers and insurers on the forum address it.

That said, you should not have to deal with any insurance company other than your own for damages to your car whether it is your fault or not. When someone decides it is not your fault, they can then go after the other insurance company (more effectively than you can). You do not NEED to talk to the other insurance company at any time in this process. If your insurance company will not do this for you, you need a new insurer (or possibly need to move to a new state if this is somehow not supported where you live).

 

Right, but you are not addressing the problem of all of his mods not being considered under his own policy. Also, moving to a new insurance company or new state probably doesn't do anything to solve the problem we are discussing.

 

They're there to protect the interest of thier shareholders! Keep that in mind.

The points about exploding repair bills once started are very true, but then the descision to repair vs total has already been made, and unless it's very, very bad, they probably won't reverse it.

If you want coverage above the depreciated value of your car, you need to get "Stated Value" inusrance coverage. I have this on my Mustang. Blue Book on a 65 Mustang is about 29 cents. I've got it covered for $35k, and need to get that raised to about $50k or more (thanks for the reminder). But I pay for the coverage, don't just assume you get it for free.

Mini for repairs? Don't even think about it. Go to the very best body and paint shop you can. There will be very, very nice cars in the bays. And a few not so nice cars, from people who've gone through this type of thing before, and learned the hard way! The repair I got from the Mini reccomended body shop from a ding long ago was just average. Once I saw the work, it was too late to do anything about it.

Matt

 

My take - getting hit sucks. Any time traffic stops I've got my eyes in the rear view, and an escape plan.
Hoping to get $35K from $5K of damage... er, optimistic.
They should certainly cover the damage, loss of value, any work lost and injuries. (personally, I can't see getting paid for 'being sore for a couple of days', but that's me.)

KBB may say $1K depreciation, but nobody's gonna pay $24.5K for a two+ year old, 40K mile MINI.
I realize it's nit-picky, but is the insurance company really supposed to reimburse the purchase price for a two used sets of rims? Installation fees?
As a general rule, any mods on car are at best 50% 'investment' and 50% one time expense. Labor fees? Gone.
We take a risk driving nice cars, and an even greater one modding them. It sucks, but the only option is to drive crappy cars and forego the joy of modding them.

Best of luck getting it all worked out!

 

It is really unfortunate that you were carrying your winter rims in the trunk of your car when it got rear ended thus totaling both sets of wheels and tires. Oh and while your covering those you may want to mention you were moving your TV, stereo, and any other electronics you own and have a receipt for. Maybe you can squeeze ‘em for $40K? Ah the American dream…

Oh on a serious question: Where the police involved? Were you or her cited for breaking any traffic laws?

 

Pick your body shop very carefully.... Visit them; Ask around for recommendations. GET ESTIMATES on your own, from multiple shops, and tell them your paying for it privately. See how they treat you.

A long time ago, I had an Isuzu pickup that got smacked up. I took it to the shop that handled all the exotics (Ferrari, Lamborgini, etc) and high end custom work in the area I was living in at the time. The quality of work SUCKED! The paint was awful and the seams never matched up. They figured it was a $12K truck and thats all the quality it deserved.

Don't assume that all shops treat all cars the same; Let them know what type of quality you are expecting. Then make sure you get it. It will help in the value you get if you sell the car.

IF there is frame damage (twisting, etc) then you should see it on the paperwork. You may be suprised at how rigid your Cooper is.... and may not have those problems.

Good Luck.

 

I went through something kind of similar several years ago, when my wife was t-boned at about 50mph in our VW GTI. Here's a few comments from my experience. Since the other driver was 100% at fault in our case (as it seems to be in yours), you have a choice of either subrogating the claim through your own ins comp, or doing it directly with the other drivers. If liability is split, or ins comps are the same, you do not have the luxury of choice.

In our case, we chose to go through the other driver's company, rather than our own. The main reason is that if going through the other driver's company, it's handled as a pure tort claim (which was very well defined earlier in the thread). If through your own, it's handled through the liability portion of your own policy. Since we went through their company, we were given a rental car (wouldn't have gotten that on our own policy, since we didn't have rental coverage), we didn't have to pay our collision deductible, and we were able to collect a diminished value claim for the car. Also, if you go through your own company, they will have a record of the claim on your account, even though you were not at fault, which could affect future insurance renewals. If the claim is through the other company, it's as if the claim never happened to your own insurance. Therefore, if the other company seems reasonable, it may be in your best interests to go through them rather than your own. However, if you have any doubts about the other company's willingness/ability to pay, it would probably be in your best interests to subrogate the claim.

As far as what you are expecting, a total is probably not a reasonable expectation. Therefore, you will not be getting 35K. The total thresholds differ by insurance company, but usually it's 85% of market, unless there's moderate to severe frame damage, then it's usually 50%. Ironically, by pushing the value of your mods, you are making it much harder to total, since it would take about 28k in repairs to total. However, you do have every right to find the best collision shop you can (the advice about finding a shop that repairs luxury vehicles is a good one). However, the advice about completely ignoring your dealer is a bad one -- they might not be good, but it can't hurt to check. Our local dealer has a collision center that's one of only 2 or 3 shops in the entire Chicago area certified to repair aluminum frame Jags, so I'd certainly trust my MINI to them.

One other comment about diminished value -- it's not absolutely necessary to sell the car to make a claim. We used a service that does these estimates professionally -- they based it on the car model, age, plus the repairs done to the car -- and submitted it to the insurance company, and they paid it without any questions. Due to some issues after the repair, we did end up getting rid of the car, and the diminished value pretty much made us whole, but we didn't make any money (the car was 8 months old at the time of the accident, about 1 year old when we sold it).

 

Matt, you are mixing two different subjects. Stated value coverage is a contract between you and your insurance company to pay you X (in your circumstance, $35,000) if your car gets damaged in a fire, earthquake (although there may be an exclusion for that - read the fine print of the policy), etc. Steyr's situation regarding his MINI is a property loss - his property has suffered a loss (the other party hitting him). It is no different than if the other party had jumped the curb and plowed into a house. The policy Property Damage section is what gets charged for the expense of the loss. I have yet to see (unless there is some law in Ohio that treats things differently) where Steyr can not recover for the "improved" value of his car less applicable depreciation. If he had smashed his car into a tree, then the Collision section of his insurance would come into play and all of the points that have been made about stated value would apply. But Steyr is NOT a collision loss. His personal injury claim is yet again a separate issue (generally covered under Personal Liability section of the policy).

One more reason to get a qualified attorney in the picture - sometimes, even insurance people don't understand their policy language.

 

This discussion is really getting to the semantics of insurance, and I'm not too sure how helpful it is to the original post. I think there are lots of helpful people on this thread, but that being said, I can't let bad information go unchecked. For some reason, accidents bring out the expert in people...and I've seen many potentially valuable cases ruined by bad advice.

To clear up any misunderstandings about how your auto policy works, read the following. It's really boring stuff, but good to know.

The Property Damage portion of a policy acts in concert with your liability insurance. If you cause an accident, then your insurance company will pay for the other party's property damage out of that portion of the policy. If that other party is injured, then their claim would be settled out of the liability portion of your policy. There are limits to these policies...you pay for these limits depending upon how much coverage you need. If you have only $10,000 in Property Damage coverage and hit a brand new M6, they could bypass your insurance and go after your assets.

If you have Collision coverage, you would use it to pay for your own property damage caused by an accident. There is typically a deductible of $500 or $1000 that you would have to pay the body shop once your car has been repaired. If you were not at fault, and you chose to get your car fixed under your own policy, the at-fault insurance carrier would reimburse you for your deductible.

Comprehensive insurance works very similarly to Collision, except it isn't used for accidents. IT's there in case your car is destroyed by an act of God, or acts of vandals. Just remember it isn't used for accidents...and the deductible probably won't be refunded to you, unless you can track down the vandal or God.

I won't go into Uninsured Motorists/ Underinsured Motorists coverage...but make sure you have it, and make sure it matches your liability limits (meaning...MAX it out).

Stated Value coverage is a good idea in theory, but it typically only applies to classic cars like Dr Onxs' sweet '65 Mustang. This is OT, but I'd like to see some pics!

 

Since my post was quoted, what was bad information about it or misleading? It seems that I was right on point in my analysis of Property Damage versus Collision versus Personal Liability coverage?

 

is get a very good lawyer. And get a very good insurance agent.

Matt

 

I would say a very good attorney is a higher priority than a good insurance agent.

 

Here's what I was trying to clear up:

SteyrTMP is in the process of using his Collision coverage, which is NOT part of the Property Damage portion of HIS policy. Property Damage is a liability coverage, and he was not liable for this accident. (I'm using CAPS for emphasis...not to yell) If he made a claim against the AT-FAULT PARTY'S policy, then it would be THEIR Property Damage coverage that would be the source of funds for his loss.

Additionally, the benefit of using the other party's Property Damage coverage, is that they would have to cover him for his mods. Something that might not be covered in his Collision coverage.

Your own personal liability coverage is there to pay for the damages and injuries that YOU caused in an accident, and therefore this part of Steyr's policy would not enter in the picture.

Also, regarding stated value claims; you said that this only applies to a comprehensive loss...not a collision loss. Stated value applies to both. The problem with stated value policies are that you can insure your car for lots of money, but when it comes time to use that coverage, you'd better be able to prove that it was worth that much, otherwise the insurance company will pay you what they feel is the "fair market value" for your car.

By the way, caminifan...I wholeheartedly agree with your other posts on this thread, but what I'm trying to explain are just the facts associated with auto insurance. If I misunderstood what you wrote, and what you meant was what I have been explaining, I sincerely apologize.