Claim denied due to noncompliance of the insured driver

You file with your insurance.

Ok I’m going to get voted down here because for some reason this is a controversial opinion on this sub.

First, yes, you should absolutely be honest about the deer related accident.

Now to the controversy. In some states, not all, but some, statute or case law prohibits insurers from denying claims due to non-cooperation of their insured. I’m an adjuster myself and had a large claim being made for injuries by my insured. The other carrier, with a large policy, denied coverage due to non-cooperation of their insured, the at fault party. We filed what’s called a declaratory action seeking a ruling the other carrier owed coverage and couldn’t deny coverage just because their insured wasn’t responding and we won, leading to the at fault party’s insurance ultimately agreeing to pay my insured’s claim. My insured was thrilled. I’m convinced the at fault party’s adjuster didn’t know any better based on my early interactions with them (and for how many replies calling me an idiot who didn’t know what I was talking about the last times I brought this up in this sub, I don’t know how widely known this is.)

You nor your carrier are obviously going to go through all the steps I outlined above for a fender bender – that was hundreds of thousands of dollars that I outlined above. But, if you let us know what state you’re in I can tell you if it’s a state that allows insurance to deny coverage for non cooperation of an insured or not, and I can give you the appropriate statute you can respond with and ask them to take a second look. It could simply be someone who didn’t know better who will take your letter to their supervisor and reverse course.

Edit: or, yes, go through your own insurance and pay your deductible. They’d code you as not at fault, but it’s still a claim and depending on the extent of damage it may or may not affect your rates. That can be very carrier and state specific.

Has the other insurance company sent you a written denial? If not, the claim has not been denied.

Some adjusters/insurance companies think that they can just make some calls and send a letter and if their insured does not respond, deny coverage. Courts don’t see it this way. The courts see it as an insurance company making the willing choice to take a person’s money and offer to accept their liability. If that person does not respond, well that is the risk the insurance company took. Did the insurance company send someone out to knock on that person’s door (they never do)? Why not (because they don’t really care to reach the person)? It is also against public interest that a person can just not pick up the phone and get away with not being held responsible. If the insurance company does not like it, pay the claim and cancel the policy. If the insurance company does not want to pay out money, do what they need to do to protect their own interest (send someone out to knock on the person’s door, etc.).

But in this case, you state you also have a video of the accident. Have you provided that video to the other person’s insurance company? If it show the accident then they don’t really need to speak to their insured.

I suspect that the other carrier just told you they might not provide coverage and are simply kicking the can down the road and hoping everyone just goes away.

I’d recommend either filing a claim with your own carrier or submitting your video and giving the carrier 10 days to pay the claim. If they don’t, file a complaint with your states Dept of Insurance.

Should you be honest about hitting the deer? That is up to you. It is a moral question.

I’m a adjuster for GEICO. If you try to claim the damage from the deer as part of the accident we will know. Most shops love taking as much money as they possibly can from us but something as egregious as a deer hit…even the most adverse shops will rat you out. There’s going to be deer hair in places you won’t even think to clean that will be found. Even if the shop doesn’t tell us we will see it in the photos we request.

We would send your claim to SIU (the fraud team) and even if it eventually gets sorted out and separated as 2 different claims it’s going to delay your claims process by at least 3 weeks. They’ll cut you out of the rental if you have one and if the shop wants to charge storage on your car for sitting there for almost a month collecting dust we won’t pay it.