My car was totaled when I was parked outside my house by someone random so they were 100% at fault. My car was a 2012 CNG Civic with only 47,000 miles which sells for 8,200 to 12,500 but one of the comparables they used had 100,000 more miles than mine so they could lower the price of the car which obviously isn’t fair so I’d only be getting 6,800. One of the comparables had 149,000 miles which lowered the price but is it even worth it to sue as they don’t wanna change the comparable. Should I just take the money and take my loss
Should I sue or take my loss
byu/AriellaSellsFeet inInsurance
Posted by AriellaSellsFeet
1 Comment
First off, the prices you see “selling for” are list prices. The car isn’t selling for those prices, and it’s difficult for a regular person to find actual sales data. The insurance companies, meanwhile, do have access to actual sales data.
A 14 year old civic running on natural gas has a pretty limited buyer’s market. “Only 47k” miles means less when the car is 14 years old, many things can go wrong and buyers know that.
Think about what you are asking, you want to “sue” for what you think you are owed. You can do that…but then while the court case plays out, you get nothing. And there’s a chance you will lose and still get nothing. The insured will have a lawyer represent them paid for by their insurance company, while you will need to pay a multi-thousand dollar retainer for your lawyer up front (if you can find a lawyer, because right now there’s no money to be recovered, so most will not be interested unless you pay their entire fee yourself, which will be 10x more than any additional money to recover). Even if you did find a lawyer to work on contingency…they will take 30-40% of any recovered funds plus all of their expenses.
Take the money. Your car was extremely old and is not worth much. It sucks, but this is the nature of insuring a depreciating asset.