Hi All, Looking for advice on how to proceed with a claim.
I was recently involved in an accident where i was rear ended on a busy street and other party was at fault.
I initiated a claim with my insurance (Progressive) and they concluded everything saying that I’m not at fault. After initiating a claim with the other party, they refused it within a day saying they are not liable.
Exact wording(sorry unable to attach a SS).
“It has been determined that coverage is not applicable for this incident due to the circumstances surrounding this loss falling under an exclusion of liability coverage.
The driver of our insured vehicle license was operating the vehicle without a valid driver's license. Driver did not have a reasonable belief he or she was entitled to
operate the vehicle and would be excluded from coverage under the following section of our policy:
Part 1 Liability:
Exclusions… (q) : to any person operating the owned automobile without a reasonable belief that he or she is entitled to do so.”
Now, My insurance is going to pay for the damages minus the deductible and they are saying if other party’s insurance refused the claim then we can’t adjudicate it. Very likely that my premium will also go up.
How do I deal with this situation, is there a way to push back on the other insurance company and have them deal
with the repairs. Should I consider getting a lawyer to sue the other party?
This is the first car I ever bought, new and it doesn’t have 10k miles on it yet. Kindly advise !
Claim Denial due to Invalid License of 2nd Party at Fault
byu/Kid-In-His-Prime inInsurance
Posted by Kid-In-His-Prime
5 Comments
Progressive will go after them as an individual to try to get your deductible back, but if someone doesn’t have valid insurance, chances are, you’ll never see any money from them.
If there’s no coverage for a scenario, that means there’s no coverage for a scenario. You can’t argue the case like you might be able to if there’s questions of fault as to how the accident actually happened.
You can always get a free consult but realsitically no lawyer is going to be interested in taking a case for property damage only and I wouldn’t count on someone with no drivers license having a lot of assetts to seize in a judgement.
If it was me I’l pay my deductible, let Progressive fix my car, and get on with my life. The time my car was legally parked on the street and struck by a texting driver I still filed a claim against my own policy; having them just deal with it is part of what I pay them premiums for.
It ducks, but this is why auto insurance is at least as much to protect our own interests as it is to protect against any liability we may incur at our fault.
We had a similar situation and were very *very* thankful we had coverage for ourselves. You can’t count on anyone anymore in terms of doing the right thing.
They aren’t denying liability they are denying coverage. There is no push back to give them. You can go through your policy and they will subrogate after the repairs are done. Or you can sue the other party directly
the other guy’s insurance already told you they’re not covering the damages because the driver was not insured under the owner’s policy.
what you suggest is a non-starter.