Diminished Value Insurance Claim: did anyone ever try this

Someone backed into my Gallardo at a stoplight. Cost of Repair was $35k, lost $20k when I tried to sell the car.

Spent a lot of time trying to get diminished value from the other person's insurance. Even hired an attorney. No luck for me

I've heard of people getting it though, I guess it all depends, but insurance usually plays very hard when asked about it. Often times saying they've never heard of it before LOL

 

Did it once, on a 911 Turbo, and the lawyers fees were just about an exact offset for the additional payment under insurance.

 

I'm confused by your post - Either the insurance contract says they cover this or not - right ?

Do you have the verbiage that your lawyer claimed contracted the insurance company to cover losses of market value (I would think they would specify a means to measure market value to support this )

It is a completely different thing to insure for the cost of repairing a car vs. insuring that the car will have a particular value after the repair.

There was a thread a while back where a poster claimed he was paid a very considerable sum for diminished value and also for loss of use. He never did come back with any specifics on how the carrier handled these items as far as liability. I just re - read the thing, and it comes off a bit as an advert for a certain Ca insurance lawyer - YMMV - http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/458-italia-sponsored-vivid-racing/381966-my-baby-returned-home-long-soap-opera.html - perhaps he will add on here with a few of the practical details ?

 

I have filed a DV claim in past on a pick-up truck and received $4500 (2month old F150 purchased for about $54K) Allstate was the carrier for both parties. No lawyer involved- i just sent in a DV estimate prepared by the body shop that did the repair. Now I'm sure that there would have been much more fuss if it was a claim of much higher value. I need to look at my policy to see it covers DV if the at fault driver's carrier will not pay the full amount. Hmmm.

 

My impression -- and I have no experience -- is that you can try to collect for DV under property damage coverage from the policy of a person at fault. The idea is that the offending driver caused you a loss of value that was his doing, just the same as if he ran into your living room.

 

DV varies by state. Some provide for it, others do not. I have had experience with the issue and would be glad to speak with you about it. Please PM me your number and I would be glad to share my information with you.

 

I live in North Carolina and our general statutes recognize diminished value claims. At the time I had a 355 and was hit by someone insured by USAA - I had State Farm. From day one I told USAA I wanted compensation for DV, and they rather quickly sent me a check for ---- a whole $540!!!! The way I looked at it, by sending me a check they atleast recognized they were on the hook for something. I then had to sue them and eventually received fair compensation for the DV claim.

 

WAIT... WHAT?? Backed up into, or rear ended?? I would suspect they had to be going pretty darn fast in reverse to cause $35k in damage!! lol

 

A Mac Truck would do the job (lol). Best

 

Call Lance Coren Wix.com TheAutoAppraiser created by lscent based on long-left-sm
He is awesome.
My story:
http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/458-italia-sponsored-vivid-racing/381966-my-baby-returned-home-long-soap-opera-2.html#post141726081

 

Good luck to you,

I was rear ended at low speeds in my old R8 Spider, total repair bill was only 7,500$... I went through the route of the Diminished Value claim as well as the car was brand new. DV estimate was 35K from two adjusters.

Constant struggle (this was in California) with the DV and Loss of Use (total damages of around 50K). I wound up hiring a great lawyer for it simply due to the fact that the adjuster tried to stiff me on just about everything (offering to only pay for 50% of the repair bill, trying to get me to go to a very low end repair shop, not paying for rental car etc)...

Wound up going to court, the sum was awarded in full. Only thing was the woman had minimal insurance, we wound up only collecting around 10K from her insurance then her policy ran out. I don't have the heart to ruin someone financially over an issue I had with her insurance company primarily so we didn't pursue avenues of collection.




It really gets down to the other person's liability/prop damage limits on their policy.