[TR] insurance

[Randall]

> All this talk of insurance, collector policies, and agreed 
> value got me thinking about who is liable.  If someone hits 
> my car, are they not liable for damages?  What does it matter 
> what my insurance says, it is their insurance and personal 
> worth which would/should pay the damages to my car. 

Maybe it doesn't always work that way with all companies, but Mercury gave me the choice of fighting directly with the other
insurance company rather than having them "subrogate" the claim (meaning Mercury would pay me and then try to collect from the other
side).  Since I was under-insured with Mercury, there was a good chance that I could have gotten more money from the other guys; but
I would have had to go it entirely on my own, Mercury would not help.  Nor could I change my mind later and claim against Mercury.  

I have seen insurance companies pull some very unpleasant tricks, like denying the claim until you fork out to file suit against
them; using all sorts of delaying tactics to keep the suit from coming to court and then suddenly offering to settle once your court
date has come up months later.  When my parents' house burned, the ins co gave them a check after a few months but then stopped
payment on it.  It was literally years before they got a court date, then the company offered to settle literally on the courthouse
steps the day of the hearing.

And besides, in my case, the other company likely would have insisted on selling the car for salvage value, while I wanted to keep
it for the (undamaged) OD transmission, alloy flywheel and so on.  Buying the car back from them (as salvage) would probably taken
most of the extra money I might have gotten from them.

So ultimately, it was a gamble I was not willing to take.  A fair price for the car (at that time and the condition it was in) would
have been around $10k, maybe a bit more (Mercury found a list of "comps" showing an average sale price of $9200 but of course
without original OD etc); so I took the check for $8k (plus a few hundred for towing and storage) and kept the car.

> Even if 
> their insurance had a limit, why is that my problem?  

Extracting money from a private individual who doesn't want to pay is a very iffy business.  You'll first have to go to court to get
the court to determine how much they owe you, then you'll get to try to collect it.  Even CA's web site says "Talk to a lawyer. If
the debtor will not pay, it can be complicated, expensive, and take a lot of time to collect your money. "

And since it costs you money to go to court, the size of the gamble just keeps getting bigger.  If you're lucky and make it all the
way, the judge may grant you "costs", but he may not.  And that private individual might well skip town (or the country) in the
meantime.

> If 
> their insurance company wants to total my car, can I not 
> refuse the offer and demand payment of damages from either 
> the company or the individual?

Sure you can refuse it; but then you are taking a chance on getting nothing at all.  (see above about collecting a debt)  "Totaling"
the car just means they will only pay the value of the car, rather than the higher cost to fix it.  That's pretty much the limit of
what you can claim against them for (not counting medical expenses and so on), so your only real option is to argue that the car is
worth more than they valued it at.  Again, it becomes a negotiation, and they don't necessarily play fair.

Randall